In a development that will surprise no one who has ever ordered a single item online, delivery trucks are now a permanent fixture on many suburban streets. For one WIRED reviewer, UPS and FedEx drops occur nearly daily, with occasional visits from DHL and Amazon, all part of the scenery when you work from home. The problem, of course, is that no one can be home 24 hours a day, and even the kindest neighbor across the way isn't always available to keep an eye on boxes.

Package hold requests, it turns out, aren't consistently honored by either major carrier. Earlier this year, FedEx seemingly discontinued its vacation hold option without telling anyone - a representative has since confirmed this to the reviewer, though no formal announcement was ever made. Porch piracy, the modern epidemic, be damned. Having packages held at shipping centers or access points typically costs about $5 per package, often more depending on the length of the hold, and requires a trip to collect them. A week away can mean fetching a dozen boxes or more.

Enter Hyve, a startup offering a smart lockbox that lets delivery drivers drop off packages in a secure location and notifies the homeowner whenever it's been accessed. After weeks of testing, the reviewer found it useful - despite significant growing pains - and suggests it might just earn a permanent spot on the front porch.

Parcel lockboxes aren't new. They work like a standard post office mailbox: a cantilevered hatch up top lets deliveries drop into a secure storage area below, accessible only through a keyed door. The Hyve Smart Package Locker forgoes the two-chamber design in favor of an electronic hatch accessed via 4-digit PINs. The box measures 32 inches high, 20 inches wide, and 20 inches deep, with interior dimensions about 4 inches shorter in each direction - a total of 7.4 cubic feet. Hyve claims this fits 80 percent of Amazon package sizes, though that obviously depends on your ordering habits. For the reviewer, three-packs of wine bottles fit fine, but anything larger was typically left outside by the courier.

Built from a combination of plastic and steel, the side panels seem a little flimsy, but there's enough reinforcement behind them that the reviewer never worried the unit would be easily damaged by a would-be thief without power tools. Units come in gray or white; the reviewer requested white to match the house but received gray instead - a minor inconvenience in the grand battle against porch piracy.