Some years ago, I stumbled upon the blog of a dutch guy, that had a great idea:
Why not make a ordinary mirror more useful by displaying additional, helpful information on the surface of the mirror?
But how, you ask? Michael (the dutch guy) came up with a very smart solution. He stripped down an old monitor and placed it behind a semi-transparent mirror (like the mirrors in a police interrogation room). Add a wooden frame and a Rasperry Pi that fills the screen with content and there you go:
Michael did’t stop there. He created a fullblown open source software called MagicMirror, that allows you to display all sorts of information (calendar, weather, news, train schedule, etc.). In addition to the build-in modules, MagicMorror provides a powerful add-on mechnism and offers plenty of custom addons, thanks to the fantastic community that emerged around Michael’s software.
I was fascinated by the idea to display useful information in an unobstrusive and delighting way. Ideally delighting enough, to get an acceptable WAF. After reading about another mirror project - this time implemented by Max Braun, an engnieer a Google - I was conviced, that this is possible and started to work own my own mirror.
My mirror is based on the MagicMirror software and the following hardware:
- Raspberry Pi 3B
- Asus MB169B+ - a ultra-slim USB-monitor
- 0.5m * 0.4m * 0,3cm mirror glass - I ordered it here
- IKEA Ribba frame, 0.5m * 0.4m - I didn’t have the tools to build my own frame, this was a great and inexpensive alternative
- PIR sensor - used to turn on the screen once movement is detected near the mirror
- 5.8GHZ Microwave Radar Sensor - I replaced the PIR with this, since this one can be placed behind the glass of the mirror
I’ll update this post with more info about my build, such as the modules I use and some pictures of the result.