Frameless Bathroom Mirror - Part 2: Hardware and Build
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This is part 2 of my bathroom mirror build, part 1 is here:
Frameless Bathroom Mirror - Part 1
I hope it is ok to use 2 threads.First of all, here is me with the final product
et voilaLast month, the glass has arrived from https://www.glas-star.de/
The basis of this project was my original bathroom mirror. It consisted of a 110 x 80 cm frame of 2 x 4 cm aluminium profiles and the mirror glass glued to the frame with double-sided mirror tape. In the next picture I freed the frame from the old mirror.
frame with shards
and here cleaned and tidied up for the fitting of the spy glass. For this I used a hot air gun and a untility knife blade.
clean frame
You can see here that the old mirror had some electric wiring (for an in-built neon tube lighting), which I salvaged for the magic mirror project.After glueing the new glass to the frame with 2-K-epoxy-glue, I covered the parts of the mirror that would later not be covered by the monitor.
I used black window film for this, here is an amazon link:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0785D9LCM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
glass coveredSince the frame only leaves 4cm space, I had to disassemble the monitor, so that the display and the electronics would fit.
I used tinsnips to dismantle the housing of the monitor’s electronics and soldered extensions to the led backlights.
controls for monitorI screwed brackets for the display panel and the monitor electronics into the aluminum frame and used power tape to support. I used adhesive bases and zipties to tidy up the wirings. I used a junction box for the mains connections (to which I later added additional lighting)
frame with display and mains boxI have adapted the MMM-buttons module to read a toggle switch to switch on and off the MMM_Webradio module, 3 momentary switches are used to control the volume and select the next radio station, you can see them in the next picture, here is a link to the buttons that I used:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07RXK544N/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
radio buttons
You can also see the microwave sensor here, which I use to detect people in front of the mirror from behind the glass.Finally, I have added 2 additional LED lamps. The reason for this is that the original neon light was not strong enough to shine through the tinted glass. (For the neon light I had left out a stripe in the mirror foil, which I then covered with frosted glass film.)
mirror with LED lampsThings I changed during the build:
It turned out that the wlan dongle whith which I had tested was too weak and slow once the mirror was monted on the wall. Therefore I got a 5GHz Wlan dongle, which works fine, no drivers required for the raspberry:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00LLIOT34/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1Behind the glass lamps are too weak to give proper light. Instead, I added these to the mirror:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07YD5NGVJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1In addition to what I described in part 1 (link), I have added a bluetooth dongle to stream the webradio to a bluetooth speaker:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0096Y2HFW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1Final thoughts on the glass: The reflection is absolutely fine, albeit a little less bright and clear than a “real” mirror. The visibility of the text is ok, but you should set the monitor to the brightest level. The look and feel of the glass comes really close to an ordinary mirror.
