Haunting A Smart Mirror With Hue And Alexa

October 28, 2017 by Rich Hawkes 1 Comment

So, your smart mirror has been running for a while, but Halloween is coming up and you want to come up with some cool Halloween stuff to display on the mirror. If you’re looking for ideas, check out [Ben Eagan]’s cool Haunted Smart Mirror which connects the mirror via a Raspberry Pi with Amazon Alexa and Phillips Hue lighting.

[Ben] points to another of his blog pages for those readers interested in the nuances of setting up Alexa with a smart mirror, while concentrating on communication with the Hue bridge and creating the setup for a new Alexa command in this post. Dealing with the Phillips Hue API seems fairly straightforward: Get the IP address of your Hue bridge from your router and the ID of your lights from the Hue app and you’re set to send commands via HTTP. [Ben] includes a Python script to make the lights flicker, which you can modify for your own lights as you wish. Once that’s done, you’ll need to set up the intent that Alexa listens for, and then modify the AWS lambda function that sends commands to the Pi. When the command shows up in the queue on the Pi, any commands [Ben] wants to play are fired off – in this case, a video is played and the Hue lights start to flicker.

There’s no mention of security in the article, so that may be worth a little attention with Alexa and the Hue, but with Halloween coming up fast even if you haven’t built a magic mirror yet, if you’ve got Hue lights, this would be a great, quick, Halloween idea. Especially if you could combine it with your outside lights so that Trick-or-Treaters can join in on the fun. Maybe you’d prefer looking up passing planes using Alexa? Or how about getting your fish to talk?

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Innocent TV Imprisoned Behind Mirror

January 15, 2017 by Rich Hawkes 19 Comments

After following along with all the Magic Mirror builds, [Troy Denton] finally caved in and started building one for his girlfriend for Christmas. These popular builds are all pretty much bespoke, and this one is no different.

His victim TV didn’t have the ability to be switched on and off by the Raspberry Pi using HDMI/CEC, so he came up with an alternative. He got a couple of opto-isolators and soldered one to the on/off button on the TV’s control board. The Pi didn’t know whether it was switching the TV on or off, it just knew it was switching it. To solve this, [Troy Denton] connected another opto-isolator to the TV’s LED, this one the other way around. When the TV is turned on, the Pi now detects it.

The enclosure is fabbed from 2×4 lumber, the mirror is one-way acrylic which runs somewhere in the $75-100 range for this 27-9/16″x15-1/2″ application. The top and bottom rails include lines of holes to encourage airflow to keep things cool. the face plate is picture framing which makes it easy to mount the mirror. An ultrasonic range finder finishes off the build and when someone stands in front of this magic mirror, the Pi senses it and turns the monitor on.

Included in [Troy]’s post are the Python code and shell scripts he wrote as well as a bunch of pictures of the build process. We’ve seen Magic Mirrors builds before, including some small ones. They’re a cool addition to the house and a fairly simple build.

Smart Mirror Notices You And Turns On

January 14, 2016 by James Hobson 22 Comments

Smart, technology filled bathrooms are inevitably coming, but until then, be the first in your group of friends to make your very own smart mirror!

Gaining popularity in recent months, it’s not that difficult to make a smart mirror. In fact, it’s really just an LCD monitor with a one-way mirror slapped on top. Similar to how Infinity Mirrors work.

The build makes use of an older LCD monitor [Tmonaco189] had laying about. He went to the hardware store and picked up some wood to build a frame that would fit the aspect ratio of the monitor perfectly — and of course to be large enough to cover up the rear casing of the monitor. Once built, it was time to make it smart! Continue reading “Smart Mirror Notices You And Turns On” →

Magic Mirror On The Wall, “Is Pi Or ESP, Fairest Of All?”

December 30, 2015 by Rud Merriam 23 Comments

“What’s the weather like, honey?” “I don’t know. Let me check the mirror.” The mirror?

Both [Dylan Pierce] and [squix] have mirror projects that display the weather. They took two different approaches which makes for an interesting comparison. [Dylan] uses a Raspberry Pi with an actual monitor behind the mirror. [squix] puts an OLED behind the mirror driven by a ESP8266. It appears there is more than one way to hack a mirror, or anything, which is what makes hacking fun.

Raspberry Pi Booting

Framing Mirror and Monitor

[squix] started with a picture frame, adding tinting film to the glass so it would reflect. A small section of tint was removed to allow the OLED to be seen. The ESP8266 software connects to the Weather Underground to get the latest information.

The Raspberry Pi version by [Dylan] puts a 27″ monitor behind the mirror. That is either terribly impressive or way over the top but seeing Linux boot behind the mirror makes it worth the effort. The Pi generates a web page which makes this adaptable as a general purpose kiosk.

A video of [squix]’s mirror in operation, after the break.

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Mirror Mirror On The Wall…

May 1, 2014 by Adam Fabio 31 Comments

Who wouldn’t want a mirror that compliments them first thing in the morning? [Michael]’s Magic Mirror does this and more. [Michael] got the idea for his mirror during an epic Macy’s shopping trip with his girlfriend. While looking for a boyfriend chair, [Michael] noticed a mirror with a lighted sign behind it. Intrigued by the effect, [Michael] realized he could build it – and build it better!

Back at home [Michael] set to work. The Magic Mirror uses a piece of one-way mirror, similar to infinity mirrors. Instead of LED’s and another mirror, [Michael] wanted to embed an entire monitor behind the glass. In order to keep the mirror thin, [Michael] needed a monitor with cables exiting toward the side or bottom rather than directly out the back. He found what he was looking for in an Iiyama monitor. Yanking the case off a brand new LCD can be a bit nerve-wracking, but [Michael] pulled it off in pursuit of a thin final product.

Magic Mirror’s frame is built with standard 2×4 lumber. [Michael] had the foresight to include some cooling holes for the heat generated by the monitor. The heavy 6.5Kg final product required a double mounting point.

With a good-looking case, it was time to get some equally good-looking data to display. [Michael] used a Raspberry Pi to drive his display. He switched the Pi’s display mode to portrait and installed Chromium in kiosk mode. The entire mirror is essentially a web page. [Michael] used some simple HTML, CSS and Javascript to pull time and weather data down from various feeds. The page is rendered in a clean Helvetica ~~Nueve~~ Neue font with matching icons. A handsome build indeed!