Mail client ideas, thinking outside the box

[Warren Morgan]

Hello and all, I just moved to xbian and so far so good...

I am setting up a project using xbian as a media service along with Sprinkler_Pi as an irrigation system for my back yard. This will all be outside providing watering systems, a wifi/router service and importantly media/music around the pool. I am not however running a screen or tv on it, it's just for audio.

One thing I would like to add is some alarm or monitor to indicate when people are arriving at the front door. Wiring the existing doorbell to my Raspberry is a bit difficult (given the distance) so I had this thought...

My Synology NAS Surveillance Station and camera reliably sees people coming to the door and will send an alert email when it sees movement. I was hoping the xbian Pi in the back yard could monitor emails and do a 'sound on new email' as an alert. The email xbmc add-on is no good as it doesnt produce sounds or monitor constantly..

Any suggestions for a email client that I can use (running in the background) that will monitor a gmail account and sound an alert through the normal 3.5mm jack over the current playing music?

A couple of quick notes, aplayer is nicely plays wav files on commend but mpg321 or mpg123 seems to garble mp3 files when they are trying to output.