3. My first 'large' mirror, and a video of my learnings
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My first 'large' mirror, and a video of my learnings

  • J

    pics (One drive): link text
    video (10 tips to help build a magic mirror) link text

    I’ve made several of my mini mirrors, but making a large one was a much different experience. I hit a lot of issues that I had to refere back to documentation or the forum, so I made a video of what tripped me up to hopefully help others. The actual build time was likely about 2 hours, but there was also time picking out a frame and picking up various components.

    Innards:

    Raspberry pi 3, PIR sensor in 3d printed case, store bought frame, Tap plastic acrylic mirror ($75)
    Dimensions: 20" x 16" mirror size.

    Monitor: 4:3 DVI 1280 x 1024 upcycled old dell monitor

    Modules:
    MMM-PIR
    MMM-Admin , MMM-QRCode (This is a killer combo!)
    MMM- Iframe
    MMM-Tools
    MMM-Mystandings - Beautiful module, very well done
    MMM-Carousel - I always install this, it’s too useful not to, but it’s not currently used…yet
    MMM-IFrame - using it for traffic…easy to do with no API key needed

    Biggest tip/finding - Having the MMM-QRCode with the path to the admin page is magical. I can walk up, scan it with my phone, and then have the UI on my phone fairly quickly to go through adding/removing/updating. The Install module of MMM-Admin is a killer feature IMO, but it still has some bugs…now and then I lose a module or it doesn’t work, but if that can get sorted, it makes it ‘app store easy’ to add stuff which I appreciate.

    The one learning that didn’t make that video is that I used the MMM-IFrame and had a youtube playlist going. The problem is I have a metered connection of 1TB a month (Comcast) and so having a looping youtube video playing was not the best idea. However, it did look super geeky and cool when I had it running…I made a URL for a playlist of star trek LCARS diagrams and had that running to spice up the mirror.

    Here’s that URL in case someone else wants to use it, or learn from it. I used it with MMM-iFrame and it was beautiful - you can use the autoplay and loop portions to get a playlist you want to loop working as well 🙂
    https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLNqjlEQ4DvUQRol-6Y1knaQyE7SXuLeIb&autoplay=1&index=448&loop=1

    I think next I may try to write or modify a module. I have a gesture sensor, and while there is a gesture plugin for it, it requires an Arduino and another sensor for presence. I’m REALLY happy with MMM-IR for presence right now, and I feel like I should be able to get this sensor working with the raspberry pi directly, so I’m going to give it a go with some python when I get a sec. It’s an APDS-9960 which I think came from sparkfun.

    One other note…anyone measuring the power draws on their monitors? my setup was 30 watts, so the MMM-PIR was a lifesaver (brought it down to 2 watts). That’s $30 a year vs. $2 a year for running this project. I wonder about some of the larger TV based mirrors and what they’re drawing…

    Anyway any questions or comments please let me know. Huge thanks to the community here…without the answers that I found searching here I wouldn’t have been able to complete this project nearly as quickly.

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