MagicMirrors that are information centers

[Exndfan]

Thought that I would share the MagicMirrors that I built…

The first endeavor utilized a 32" LED television that had been given to me by a friend. I removed the plastic cabinetry from the television and then cut an opening in the basement family room wall the exact size of the television (I chose the location at the bottom of the stairs and was fortunate that the back side of the wall wasn’t finished as it was in the mechanical area of the basement). I put the television in the opening and then used oak trim to make a nice frame. Pictures are of the front side and the back side.

After I built my first MagicMirror, I found that it was really inconvenient to have to go to the basement just to see the important stuff so, I decided to build a second mirror utilizing a second Raspberry Pi. (Truth is I needed a project to keep my hands and mind occupied!) I had an old iPad laying around that wasn’t doing anything so I decided that it would make a nice display.

For the iPad, I made a small opening in the wall behind the iPad and fished the power cord down into the basement laundry room. I used small pieces of oak (1/2" and 1/4" thick) to hold the iPad on the wall. This MagicMirror is on the wall immediately inside the back door. This one is more convenient for us to see the temperature as we are leaving the house. I did have to remove the overhead flights module on this one because of space limitations. This MagicMirror uses VNC to connect to the Raspberry Pi which is located in the networking closet of our home.

Both of the Raspberry Pis backup their respective home folders to a Macintosh on the home network every morning. Every night (around midnight) the Macintosh sends a shutdown command to the Pis and then sends a command to the Sonoff at each Pi to cut the power. The
Sonoffs power up in the morning which causes the Pis to power up for the day.

Building these have been fun and I hope that these pics inspire others to build.