Mirror boot time

[pddh]

Hi all. I’m new and looking to build a bathroom mirror. I’ve been inspired by everyone else’s fab builds!

I’m thinking of wiring into the ceiling light circuit so it switches on when the light is turned on. What roughly is the boot time for a pi running magic mirror and would this be a good idea so it’s not constantly on?

[Mykle1]

@pddh

My 2 cents:

You’ll likely kill your SD card that way. Killing the power rather than “shutting down” the pi does bad things to the SD card.

Go with a sensor that “wakes up” your display when there is motion and turns it off when there is no motion.

Just one old dude’s opinion

[OberfragGER]

@pddh I have my MM in the bathroom.
Actual solution - change the wiring (a bit)
I already use ioBroker for some SmartHome magic.

So i installed a shelly to catch the switch and set the shelly to detaced. With this- i can activate/deactive the power only with the shelly-app, ioBroker, Alexa e.g. So i have power the whole time behind my Mirror like i want an no one can turn off the power accidently. Oh- i fogot to mention… i have a double switch installed. One for the regular light and one for the power behind the mirror.

2nd step- I have MQTT-service installed on the RPI (found the script online). WIth the “vcgencmd” you can turn off/ on the monitor signal to save some power, when not needed. Man PIR-Modules do the same.

3rd step- let ioBroker (is the MQTT broker in this case) set the MQTT Mesasage - “Montitor on” e.g… when the switch is pressed on. And “monitor off” when the switch is off.

So now you have a fully running MM and when someone is pressing the switch (or using the iphone-Home app, or using Alexa or or or…) the the MQTT state is set to “Monitor on” and the RPI (which has subsrcibed on that channel) is seeing the “Monitor on” command and starts “vcgencmd_1”.

So the Monitor ist switched off.

If you dont have any Smart Home Handler… You can have the MQTT-Broker on the RPI instead and when you use Tasmota you can configure Tasmota to communicate directly. So no need for ioBroker.

I hope you can follow my “instructions”.

[pddh]

@mykle1 thank you. Good advice. I did worry about such a harsh shutdown

[pddh]

@oberfragger ah this is a really cool idea. I’ve never tried anything like this but I’m relatively tech savvy so with a bit of research I’m sure I can implement this.

I’m planning on using a low voltage laptop screen so to avoid 240v in the bathroom. Presuming larger monitor screens need more?

[OberfragGER]

@pddh I forgot to mention- i have a double switch installed. One for the bathroom lights and the other for the mirror light. So i can use the mirror light easily for the MM.

Later on i will break thru the wall and make a socket behind the mirror. So i have constant 220v and the Alexa behind the mirror will have always power.

I power off the rpi and monitor fully over night for saving some energy and daily fresh reboot.