The magic mirror was a very interesting project for me, when I first seen a magic mirror I was like “OH the future of mirrors!”. So I decided to make my own, it was a long processes with many challenges and I learned a lot from it, so in this post I will be going over my experience creating the magic mirror.

Parts required for this project:

  • Wood (for the frame)
  • Wood Glue
  • A monitor (needs to be taken apart)
  • A raspberry pi
  • Plasti Dip (Any spray paint would work)
  • A two way mirror
  • A good tutorial (The one I followed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkVBAcvbrjU&t=2s)

 

The Process

I first drew out designs on how I wanted the frame to look and then started prototyping, the first design I tried was cutting groves into the wood to slide the monitor in place, on paper it seemed like a great idea however, it didn’t work at all. So I ended up going with my second design which was 4 boards, with 45-degree cuts at both ends for a basic looking frame, I then put some boards to hold the monitor in place. The software I used for the raspberry pi can be found in the video links in parts required. This software displays the time and date at the top right of the screen, the weather at the top left, and news headlines at the bottom. I played around with the code a bit to adjust it to my liking.

Conclusion

This was a very fun project to work on, with many challenges to debug and work around. It was great experience working with Raspberry Pi’s, wood working, also playing around with the Python code. Some major things I would do differently is use a bigger monitor, the one I used was only 18″. I would also spend more time on the frame cleaning it up and making it look better. If you are considering trying the project my tips are measure twice and cut once, and spend a lot of time figuring out how you want your frame because that will decided how good it is going to look.

 

Video of complete project:
Categories: Smart Mirror

1 Comment

David Kitchen · December 1, 2018 at 9:22 pm

Logan that looks great. Good job !

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