Newbie with some initial questions

A Former User

Been interested in doing this for some time and think I might take the plunge. Very familiar with coding, websites, servers, etc., but do have some questions.

I’m seeing some people recommending frameless monitors. My initial thought is you would end up with a bit of the screen hidden on all sides if you do this right? I’m picturing how a print is framed and how the front of the frame overlaps the actual picture so it fits snug. The print would be placed inside your frame from the back, and the front which is slightly smaller, would hold it in and overlap the front just a bit. If you used a franless monitor you would be covering part of the viewable area right?
I’ve seen some ‘brackets’ that can add touchscreen and go outside of the mirror. Do these perform well? First thoughts is it would smear like crazy and would not be a smooth glide with your fingers like a phone is. Has anyone trued an oleophobic glass cover over the mirror to prevent that - like the protective covers for phone screens?
Monitor buttons - are most of you relocating these on the outside of your frames or what?
Power saving. Sounds like the best bet is to setup something to detect motion and go into standby/powersaving after a timeout. Are you mounting this in the frame or…?

Just some initial thoughts that came up before I decide to go through with this. I can easily see going down a rabbit hole with options so opinions/comments would be welcome.

bhepler

IMHO:

Frameless monitors are okay. I personally remove the plastic bezel from the monitors so they’re essentially frameless anyway. If you’re uncomfortable with this, you can solve it by slinging money at the problem and buying a frameless monitor. The facing frame that you build in a typical mirror is going to put a border around the edges anyway. There is padding around the edge built into the Magic Mirror default stylesheet, so this becomes kind of a moot point.
I have not built a touchscreen mirror, mainly for the reasons you mention. I try to keep my mirror looking like a mirror, and avoid finger smudges. A lot of people want a touch interface for some reason. I don’t personally understand it. The interface is mostly push, not push-and-drag so that’s more or less a non-issue.
I relocate mine to the bottom of the box, hidden behind the frame. For the most part, they’re unused. But I like to leave them accessible just in case.
My first mirror had a camera behind the acrylic that would detect movement. The latest mirror also uses a camera behind the glass. The next one will probably feature a hole drilled in the facing frame for the sensor. With a little patience and sharp tools, it can be very discreet.