5 ms·

How to build a super-slim smart mirror

177 points by tambourine_man 4y ago

fegu 4y ago
The text says not to go lower than 300 nits for the display, but the linked display is 250 nits?
3np 4y ago
This is all great but don't underestimate these mirror displays: A friend built a similar one and disabled it when he saw the energy consumption. And this was a few years back. Still waiting to pull the trigger on an appropriate e-paper display. At least I'd suggest to measure the setup before you commit to the whole crafts project.
- criddell 4y ago
  I was thinking about a similar project once and the electricity cost was about $1 / month. Am I way off on my calculations?
  - ale42 4y ago
    At the current electricity prices we're paying here (~$0.35/kWh), this would be around 4 W of continuous consumption. That's not a lot, you can basically power you Pi with it, but not the screen... count at least 10x more costs to operate the screen 24h a day. But as mentioned by someone, if you use a sensor to only turn on the screen when there's someone in front of it (and if you actually turn OFF your screen when there's nobody, and not just display a black screen), then you can almost remove the display power from the equation, unless you spend your day in front of the mirror.
    - olex 4y ago
      On the Raspberry Pi, you can pretty easily switch off the HDMI output via shell commands, which sends most displays into low-power standby. It takes a couple seconds to switch back on and wake the screen when activity is detected, but the tradeoff is easily worth it.
      - axus 4y ago
        How much energy to run a microphone, waiting for "Mirror, mirror, on the wall..."
- olex 4y ago
  Use a PIR motion sensor to only turn on the screen when someone is around. Mine has been running for years with a 27" LCD inside, the average power use is negligible when it's in <1W standby most of the time.
- rafabulsing 4y ago
  I don't think an e-paper display would work in this case, though? The nature of two way mirrors requires that the screen actually emits light (instead of just reflecting it) for it to come through. Maybe an OLED panel would do the trick though, since most of the screen will be turned off. Probably much more expensive to get one of those, though.
  - 3np 4y ago
    For a mirror no, for displaying the same information yes.
cs02rm0 4y ago
I went to do this sort of thing the other day. First thing I did was try and find a Pi Zero 2 W. Discovered most models of Raspberry Pi are completely unavailable. And so, another side project was canned.
- vrosas 4y ago
  Yep. I got all excited to set up a PiHole at one point during the pandemic and then realized how impossible it was to actually buy a raspberryPi and gave up. Hopefully one day
- tbran 4y ago
  Wow, you're not kidding! I checked ebay and saw one bid to $50 and another buy-it-now for $93. For a Pi Zero!
- wartijn_ 4y ago
  That has been the situation ever since the worldwide chip shortage hit. Raspberry Pi (the company) decided to prioritize companies that use Raspberry Pi's in their products over consumers. So it became almost impossible to get a Raspberry Pi, unless you were willing to pay a huge markup to a scalper. The situation should improve this year though. > As a result, we can say with confidence that, after a lean first quarter, we expect supply to recover to pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter of 2023, and to be unlimited in the second half of the year. https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-update-its-good-news/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-update-its-goo...
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    It's not entirely their fault. The Raspberry Pi foundation has very close ties to Broadcom, who make all of their CPU SoC's. The original Pi was made with super cheap chips Broadcom was struggling to sell to anyone else. Either a batch of SoC's that didn't sell as well as expected, and later fabrication capacity reserved at a foundry that it later turned out wasn't needed. The Pi foundation basically sucks up overproduction of chips from Broadcom, in return for low prices. But when there is a chip shortage and no overproduction, they don't get any.
blkhawk 4y ago
The guide is a bit lacking - I made such a foil based smart mirror and the mirror you get from just a foil is not good. I would more call it a reflective grey surface than a true mirror. So I would suggest getting a proper partially silvered glass sheet and getting the money for that by not using a currently overpriced and hard to get raspberry pi.
Khaine 4y ago
Something like this looks so cool, but I worry about the security of it, and the energy consumption.
- wartijn_ 4y ago
  About which security risks do you worry?
  - Khaine 4y ago
    its a computer that connects to the internet. What isn't their to worry about?
    - breakingcups 4y ago
      I suppose none of your other computers connect to the internet, otherwise you'd be in a constant state of worry.
- amelius 4y ago
  It's just a screen behind a mirror. No cameras.
RegW 4y ago
Doh! I was expecting something about mirroring databases.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jayonsoftware 4y ago
Where can i buy that is premade so all i have to do is hook my PC / Pi up to it.
- amelius 4y ago
  I'm betting IKEA will have such a product in the next 1 or 2 years.
joshster 4y ago
There is still no touch input. If the display has PCAP that can't reach through the mirror then this type of module would add touch on top of the mirror. https://neonode.com/technologies/zforce/touch-sensor-modules https://neonode.com/technologies/zforce/touch-sensor-modules
- soco 4y ago
  Fingerprints on the mirror won't look that great though.
  - azhsetiawan 4y ago
    Oleophobic coating mirror but that will add to the cost
nsteel 4y ago
How are there exactly zero photos showing how slim this thing is/isn't!?! EDIT: In other news, the settings menu of Pi Imager is brilliant. It automagically fills in your RSA public key, your WiFi details, and other time-saving details. I can't believe how hard we had to fight the RPi devs to make the feature usable and stop hiding it behind a weird keypress combo (to the point we released a fork). They were obsessed the extra options in there would confuse newcomers too much. Those devs were weirdly condescending and really hard to work with, I won't bother again.
- djbusby 4y ago
  They link to the display to use on Amazon. It's very thin at 1 cm.
  - poxrud 4y ago
    But then they use spacers to make it thicker in order to fit the RPi inside.
- mft_ 4y ago
  It's sad that the Raspberry Pi, which was originally conceived as a simple and accessible computer for people to learn new skills, has become so intertwined with the user-unfriendliness of Linux. (The comparison with the simplicity of the original BBC Micro is comical.) You give one example of how the devs (who, of course, fully 'get' Linux and are fully bought in to the experience) have seemingly little insight into how this impacts less able users. (Somehow they think that creating ssh and wpa_supplicant.conf files in the boot folder are less confusing then an extra option in the installer!?) Other examples (from my very recent experience) include simply trying to install fairly mainstream libraries on a Pi: it took (literally) several days, multiple retries, multiple failed approaches from blogs or stackoverflow, before I could get a working install of python-opencv. (And my final 'success' was just sheer luck, plus trial-and-error, I think). And there are other examples; every time I start a new project thinking the Pi is the perfect starting-point, the ultimate time taken is 5-10x what it probably should have been. If the user experience is this bad for someone with otherwise strong IT ability, how on earth do they expect anyone with less expertise to succeed?
iamflimflam1 4y ago
If you've got an old dead/useless iPad lying around then taking the screen out and reusing it can be good fun. https://youtu.be/ENKhizrCuPU https://youtu.be/ENKhizrCuPU
Damogran6 4y ago
My wife had a monitor die early (16 months?) and I'd LOVE to turn it into a screen. The problem is that I'm betting the panel is fine, and the power is fine, but finding a driver board is near impossible, and I don't know enough about driving a screen to roll my own. (It's a 24" 2k screen, which would be awesome, and I kinda don't want to recycle it if I can conceivably reuse it.)
- dan1234 4y ago
  You're probably best off looking for the same model monitor with a broken panel but working driver board.
- abrugsch 4y ago
  there is a roaring trade on ebay/aliexpress configuring generic HDMI/VGA->LCD panel driver boards. once you strip down the monitor, get the model number of the actual panel and google/ebay/aliexpress search for <panel model> + hdmi driver and you will probably find one in the $20-$40 range. a typical example is take a 1st/2nd gen iPad which has been locked out (and therefore useless to anyone trying to unlock it without the original iCloud account) usually sell for about $/£10 on ebay, strip out the panel and pair with a $20 HDMI->LCD interface for a standalone 9.7" IPS monitor (albeit at 1024x768 res but the clarity is amazing)
ineptech 4y ago
I made one of these (not this fancy, just a recycled Android tablet mounted behind one-way mirror glass, running a home-made app) and highly recommend it. I was 100% prepared for it to be a novelty that we got bored of in a few months, but eight years later it's still awesome! You can see my mirror and app code at https://github.com/ineptech/mirror https://github.com/ineptech/mirror but the version in the play store is outdated (weather and stock ticker apps are broken due to the free APIs going away) and I've lost the Play store signing key needed to update it. edit: biggest "lesson learned" I'd add here is, I experimented with both touch and voice support but didn't like either. I already have laptops and tablets aplenty to interact with, I prefer to use this mirror like a clock - glance at it when I want to information, and otherwise ignore it.
- e12e 4y ago
  > I experimented with both touch and voice support but didn't like either. . I already have laptops and tablets aplenty to interact with, I prefer to use this mirror like a clock - glance at it when I want to information, and otherwise ignore it. Clearly the answer is machine vision/camera/gesture input :) Maybe expression recognition - smile for weather, frown for stock ticker... :)
tux 4y ago
Just a few days ago, I thought to myself... "We are in 2023 but still no smart mirrors" like in "The 6th Day" Arnold Schwarzenegger film. ^_^ Very cool project.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I have some friends that have a bedroom wall TV that is a mirror, when it's off. I suspect that it cost quite a bit. They have a nice crib.
- stronglikedan 4y ago
  All my TVs are mirrors when they're off. Just really bad mirrors.
- amerine 4y ago
  It's not that expensive to buy a mirror that covers your TV. I'm not suggesting I have any clue what your friends setup is and if they used a dielectric mirror it was probably pretty spendy compared to the price of TVs today: https://www.twowaymirrors.com/tvmirror/ https://www.twowaymirrors.com/tvmirror/

fegu 4y ago

The text says not to go lower than 300 nits for the display, but the linked display is 250 nits?

3np 4y ago

This is all great but don't underestimate these mirror displays: A friend built a similar one and disabled it when he saw the energy consumption. And this was a few years back. Still waiting to pull the trigger on an appropriate e-paper display. At least I'd suggest to measure the setup before you commit to the whole crafts project.

criddell 4y ago
I was thinking about a similar project once and the electricity cost was about $1 / month. Am I way off on my calculations?
- ale42 4y ago
  At the current electricity prices we're paying here (~$0.35/kWh), this would be around 4 W of continuous consumption. That's not a lot, you can basically power you Pi with it, but not the screen... count at least 10x more costs to operate the screen 24h a day. But as mentioned by someone, if you use a sensor to only turn on the screen when there's someone in front of it (and if you actually turn OFF your screen when there's nobody, and not just display a black screen), then you can almost remove the display power from the equation, unless you spend your day in front of the mirror.
  - olex 4y ago
    On the Raspberry Pi, you can pretty easily switch off the HDMI output via shell commands, which sends most displays into low-power standby. It takes a couple seconds to switch back on and wake the screen when activity is detected, but the tradeoff is easily worth it.
    - axus 4y ago
      How much energy to run a microphone, waiting for "Mirror, mirror, on the wall..."
olex 4y ago
Use a PIR motion sensor to only turn on the screen when someone is around. Mine has been running for years with a 27" LCD inside, the average power use is negligible when it's in <1W standby most of the time.
rafabulsing 4y ago
I don't think an e-paper display would work in this case, though? The nature of two way mirrors requires that the screen actually emits light (instead of just reflecting it) for it to come through. Maybe an OLED panel would do the trick though, since most of the screen will be turned off. Probably much more expensive to get one of those, though.
- 3np 4y ago
  For a mirror no, for displaying the same information yes.

cs02rm0 4y ago

I went to do this sort of thing the other day. First thing I did was try and find a Pi Zero 2 W. Discovered most models of Raspberry Pi are completely unavailable. And so, another side project was canned.

vrosas 4y ago
Yep. I got all excited to set up a PiHole at one point during the pandemic and then realized how impossible it was to actually buy a raspberryPi and gave up. Hopefully one day
tbran 4y ago
Wow, you're not kidding! I checked ebay and saw one bid to $50 and another buy-it-now for $93. For a Pi Zero!
wartijn_ 4y ago
That has been the situation ever since the worldwide chip shortage hit. Raspberry Pi (the company) decided to prioritize companies that use Raspberry Pi's in their products over consumers. So it became almost impossible to get a Raspberry Pi, unless you were willing to pay a huge markup to a scalper. The situation should improve this year though. > As a result, we can say with confidence that, after a lean first quarter, we expect supply to recover to pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter of 2023, and to be unlimited in the second half of the year. https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-update-its-good-news/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-update-its-goo...
- londons_explore 4y ago
  It's not entirely their fault. The Raspberry Pi foundation has very close ties to Broadcom, who make all of their CPU SoC's. The original Pi was made with super cheap chips Broadcom was struggling to sell to anyone else. Either a batch of SoC's that didn't sell as well as expected, and later fabrication capacity reserved at a foundry that it later turned out wasn't needed. The Pi foundation basically sucks up overproduction of chips from Broadcom, in return for low prices. But when there is a chip shortage and no overproduction, they don't get any.

blkhawk 4y ago

The guide is a bit lacking - I made such a foil based smart mirror and the mirror you get from just a foil is not good. I would more call it a reflective grey surface than a true mirror. So I would suggest getting a proper partially silvered glass sheet and getting the money for that by not using a currently overpriced and hard to get raspberry pi.

Khaine 4y ago

Something like this looks so cool, but I worry about the security of it, and the energy consumption.

wartijn_ 4y ago
About which security risks do you worry?
- Khaine 4y ago
  its a computer that connects to the internet. What isn't their to worry about?
  - breakingcups 4y ago
    I suppose none of your other computers connect to the internet, otherwise you'd be in a constant state of worry.
amelius 4y ago
It's just a screen behind a mirror. No cameras.

RegW 4y ago

Doh! I was expecting something about mirroring databases.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jayonsoftware 4y ago

Where can i buy that is premade so all i have to do is hook my PC / Pi up to it.

amelius 4y ago
I'm betting IKEA will have such a product in the next 1 or 2 years.

joshster 4y ago

There is still no touch input. If the display has PCAP that can't reach through the mirror then this type of module would add touch on top of the mirror. https://neonode.com/technologies/zforce/touch-sensor-modules https://neonode.com/technologies/zforce/touch-sensor-modules

soco 4y ago
Fingerprints on the mirror won't look that great though.
- azhsetiawan 4y ago
  Oleophobic coating mirror but that will add to the cost

nsteel 4y ago

How are there exactly zero photos showing how slim this thing is/isn't!?! EDIT: In other news, the settings menu of Pi Imager is brilliant. It automagically fills in your RSA public key, your WiFi details, and other time-saving details. I can't believe how hard we had to fight the RPi devs to make the feature usable and stop hiding it behind a weird keypress combo (to the point we released a fork). They were obsessed the extra options in there would confuse newcomers too much. Those devs were weirdly condescending and really hard to work with, I won't bother again.

djbusby 4y ago
They link to the display to use on Amazon. It's very thin at 1 cm.
- poxrud 4y ago
  But then they use spacers to make it thicker in order to fit the RPi inside.
mft_ 4y ago
It's sad that the Raspberry Pi, which was originally conceived as a simple and accessible computer for people to learn new skills, has become so intertwined with the user-unfriendliness of Linux. (The comparison with the simplicity of the original BBC Micro is comical.) You give one example of how the devs (who, of course, fully 'get' Linux and are fully bought in to the experience) have seemingly little insight into how this impacts less able users. (Somehow they think that creating ssh and wpa_supplicant.conf files in the boot folder are less confusing then an extra option in the installer!?) Other examples (from my very recent experience) include simply trying to install fairly mainstream libraries on a Pi: it took (literally) several days, multiple retries, multiple failed approaches from blogs or stackoverflow, before I could get a working install of python-opencv. (And my final 'success' was just sheer luck, plus trial-and-error, I think). And there are other examples; every time I start a new project thinking the Pi is the perfect starting-point, the ultimate time taken is 5-10x what it probably should have been. If the user experience is this bad for someone with otherwise strong IT ability, how on earth do they expect anyone with less expertise to succeed?

iamflimflam1 4y ago

If you've got an old dead/useless iPad lying around then taking the screen out and reusing it can be good fun. https://youtu.be/ENKhizrCuPU https://youtu.be/ENKhizrCuPU

Damogran6 4y ago

My wife had a monitor die early (16 months?) and I'd LOVE to turn it into a screen. The problem is that I'm betting the panel is fine, and the power is fine, but finding a driver board is near impossible, and I don't know enough about driving a screen to roll my own. (It's a 24" 2k screen, which would be awesome, and I kinda don't want to recycle it if I can conceivably reuse it.)

dan1234 4y ago
You're probably best off looking for the same model monitor with a broken panel but working driver board.
abrugsch 4y ago
there is a roaring trade on ebay/aliexpress configuring generic HDMI/VGA->LCD panel driver boards. once you strip down the monitor, get the model number of the actual panel and google/ebay/aliexpress search for <panel model> + hdmi driver and you will probably find one in the $20-$40 range. a typical example is take a 1st/2nd gen iPad which has been locked out (and therefore useless to anyone trying to unlock it without the original iCloud account) usually sell for about $/£10 on ebay, strip out the panel and pair with a $20 HDMI->LCD interface for a standalone 9.7" IPS monitor (albeit at 1024x768 res but the clarity is amazing)

ineptech 4y ago

I made one of these (not this fancy, just a recycled Android tablet mounted behind one-way mirror glass, running a home-made app) and highly recommend it. I was 100% prepared for it to be a novelty that we got bored of in a few months, but eight years later it's still awesome! You can see my mirror and app code at https://github.com/ineptech/mirror https://github.com/ineptech/mirror but the version in the play store is outdated (weather and stock ticker apps are broken due to the free APIs going away) and I've lost the Play store signing key needed to update it. edit: biggest "lesson learned" I'd add here is, I experimented with both touch and voice support but didn't like either. I already have laptops and tablets aplenty to interact with, I prefer to use this mirror like a clock - glance at it when I want to information, and otherwise ignore it.

e12e 4y ago
> I experimented with both touch and voice support but didn't like either. . I already have laptops and tablets aplenty to interact with, I prefer to use this mirror like a clock - glance at it when I want to information, and otherwise ignore it. Clearly the answer is machine vision/camera/gesture input :) Maybe expression recognition - smile for weather, frown for stock ticker... :)

tux 4y ago

Just a few days ago, I thought to myself... "We are in 2023 but still no smart mirrors" like in "The 6th Day" Arnold Schwarzenegger film. ^_^ Very cool project.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

I have some friends that have a bedroom wall TV that is a mirror, when it's off. I suspect that it cost quite a bit. They have a nice crib.

stronglikedan 4y ago
All my TVs are mirrors when they're off. Just really bad mirrors.
amerine 4y ago
It's not that expensive to buy a mirror that covers your TV. I'm not suggesting I have any clue what your friends setup is and if they used a dielectric mirror it was probably pretty spendy compared to the price of TVs today: https://www.twowaymirrors.com/tvmirror/ https://www.twowaymirrors.com/tvmirror/