![]() I just started programming in college, and I wasn’t even a computer science major. I’ve been programming for a couple years now, but I’ve been a computer nerd my entire life. Is this the first time you’ve done anything like this or do you dabble in computer-based projects? Pierce removed the monitor from its plastic casing to be able to fit semi-flush with the wooden edge of the mirror. The reason for that is I’m hoping one day to have a microphone in it so you could say “mirror mirror” and it just turns on to respond to comments like that. Your unofficial name for it is ‘MirrorMirror?’ So I tweaked his design, wrote my own software for it, and thought it would be the perfect Christmas present for my girlfriend. When I saw another guy post a magic mirror idea I was trying to follow through with it, but a lot of parts were Europe-only. So I learned the basics of woodworking from just helping her out. My girlfriend has been doing woodworking for a couple years now. I talked to Pierce about his DIY tech, what he feels about his idea taking off on the internet, and how technology like this can eventually become normal in our everyday lives. It’s a basic version of the kind of sophisticated on screen displays you’ve seen for decades in sci-fi movies like Minority Report and Total Recall, except he made it easy to build. The mirror also - ta daaaaa! - shows you your reflection. Within days, and aided by a step-by-step blog post that made the rounds on all the right places on the internet, the smart mirror that he created after seeing a similar design on another blog has become the most buzzed about DIY project in a while.īy gutting a monitor that runs on a simple computer and placing it behind a thin two-way mirror that he fitted into a wood frame, Pierce created a widget-based smart mirror that can do such handy tricks as tell you the weather or list the latest top news stories, depending on how it’s programmed - the limits are really whatever you want to do with it. Motion Sensing: Using a PIR sensor for your Raspberry Pi you can have your display turn on only when there is someone in the room.Dylan Pierce, a web designer in Philadelphia, thought he’d use some computer science and elbow grease to build a simple Christmas present for his girlfriend. If you use a smart phone with Google Assistant already installed this should work out of the box. For this you will need to add a USB microphone and USB speaker. Voice Control: Some people have used their Raspberry Pi driven smart mirrors to add Alexa and voice controls. This can be anything from baseboard trim, to a picture frame, to using an existing medicine cabinet.Ĥ) Finally you will download one of the Android apps shown below and customize it for your needs. Option 1) For a full mirror display, a computer monitor in combination with a small computer (Typically a Raspberry Pi (a kit with power cord starts at $42)) would be a good optionįor smaller displays or where you only want part of the mirror to display information a cheap Android Tablet or one of your old smartphones will do the trick.ģ) An enclosure to hold the glass and display you choose. Would you like to have the information take up the entire mirror or just a small section? This is really driven by how large of a display you would like. Note: Some people have complained about the final finish using this.Ģ) Something to run the display on. Acrylic: A cheaper 1-3 mm Acrylic two way mirror starting at $27 for a 12"x24" piece. Glass: 1/4" thick two way mirror glass - starting at $89.99 for a 12"x24" piece To build your own smart mirror, you will need some hardware:ġ) A Glass or Acrylic two-way mirror where one side reflects light and has the appearance of a mirror and the other transmits light through it. If he needs to know something that’s not in one of the widgets, the mirror also can access Android’s built-in voice search features.īraun hasn’t yet posted a full how-to with the complete bill of materials, but we estimate a setup like this would cost upwards of $500, with the monitor and the glass as the main expenses. Like the examples below, there’s no touchscreen capability - and who would want all those fingerprints greasing up the mirror anyway? - but Braun’s idea was to create a UI that presents a quick-glance overview of information and doesn’t require much interaction. The screen shows widgets like time, weather and headlines, and Braun says it can be expanded to include basically anything that has a Google Now card. ![]() It’s built from a super-thin Asus monitor behind two-way glass, with a Fire TV HDMI streaming stick running a custom Android application. One of the slickest-looking examples was just posted earlier this month by Google employee Max Braun.
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