Bathroom Mirror HUD Displays Time And Weather

mirror_hud

By and large, the standard household mirror is one item that has not made much real progress over the years. They hang on the wall reflecting light, and that’s about it.

A few years back, some students studying in the Department of Interaction Design at Chalmers University sought to enhance their morning routine with an interactive mirror. Their project was constructed using a two-way mirror with several Arduino-driven LED displays embedded behind the glass. Once a hand is swiped past the pair of embedded light dependent resistors, the display is activated. Subsequent hand swipes trigger the mirror to toggle between the different modes, providing the user with the current time, weather information as well as a toothbrush timer.

The project writeup is quite thorough, including plenty of source code and information on some of the components they used. You can take a look at their work here (PDF).

Check out the interactive mirror we featured that served as inspiration for their project.

[Thanks Emil]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Ikw2zmeJM&w=470]

18 thoughts on “Bathroom Mirror HUD Displays Time And Weather

  1. Dear god I love it! Great build, I agree with mike a scale would really be a neat addon to the system, assuming they own the house/home they could surely mount the scale in the floor so it goes unseen.

  2. I would love to have this in every bathroom in my house! Wonderful idea! In some bathrooms the LEDs maybe need to be a bit brighter, maybe fade up when its lighter, and fade lower when lights are out?

  3. One more idea. Add some kind of the noise sensor and start a timer when toothbruch motor sound is detected. Play a gong and stop the timer when not done long enough. Play nice sound when done long enough.

    This will help people to brush their teeth long enough (did I say long enough? anyway, you do get the idea).

  4. that’s great and all, but it would never be clean from your wet and dirty fingers all over it to do the swiping. perhaps a close proximity sensor would be more practical in real use.

  5. Haha really fun to see that my project made it all the way to hackaday :)

    And mike, attaching a scale is a really awesome idea. It could easily be hidden in perhaps a carpet infront of the mirror that you stand on when using the mirror.

    1. Make it a Bluetooth scale, so the wiring is minimal.
      And I saw a DIY feature where the scale slides into a hole cut into the cabinet baseboard, and has a spring loaded latch (think SD card mechanism) to scoot the scale out when it is needed.

  6. Haha My old headlights Had the reflective shield burnt away from halogens : PI use HID And LEDS on my camry I am very green but I would not reuse my headlights I would buy aftermarket ones : P over time the road debries Cracks themAnd rocks do you can not restore cracks : ) I just get new ones after a few years every 3 years or so I will buy new headlights : P And yes I do make good money However this is great for cars that can not have replacement headlights as an option : P

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