3. Bathroom MM

Bathroom MM

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    Finally finished my magic mirror for the bathroom.
    The mirror itself is about 60cm wide and 1m high. The screen is put in the upper half of the frame so all the information is shown slightly above eye height.

    The internals of the mm are pretty standard I think. A rpi3, installed with the mm framework and standard modules, shows the information on the screen. The screen is one I had laying around.
    For the frame I’ve used 18mm green MDF material and I’ve made a support in the middle to put the screen on. The mirror is slightly bigger than the frame and is glued on the frame.
    On the bottom, the frame sticks out a little to support a small glass shelve below the mirror. On the sides are two led strips.

    All this is powered with an electrical connection behind the mirror that is connected to the main switch of the bathroom. The screen and the led strips will be switched on/off with the main bathroom lights. The rpi is always on (connected to an electrical socket below the mirror).

    The only thing I’m not fully happy with is the brightness of the screen behind the mirror. Either the glass doesn’t transmit enough light or the screen is not bright enough (brightness and contrast of the screen are adjusted to max values). By making the font-size and weight high enough, everything stays readable but I would have liked more bright text.

    I have left the screen inside its casing. In brightness this made almost no difference and the case is not that deep. The frame is 7,5cm deep.
    To mount everything on the wall I’ve used a Z-shaped profile (http://www.helbig.be/images/pages/Blog/Producten/01.JPG). One is screwed on the mirror and one (same profile but upside down) on the wall. This way I could divide the weight over more than two anchor points (4 screws in the wall as well as some glue between the profile and the tiles) as the wall is made of a very porous material and the mirror weighs about 15 to 20kg I think.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4PtgobSsM6kaG5UYlRrSVRKUGM/view?usp=sharing
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4PtgobSsM6kOVViSVhRTTVYT3c/view?usp=sharing
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4PtgobSsM6kQ3RzbmJpQVBVcnM/view?usp=sharing
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4PtgobSsM6kZ2NQd1pUMHRCWDA/view?usp=sharing

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  • Module Developer

    @axl1988 I don’t have permission to view the images from the google account, just the bottom one

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  • A

    Ok, apparently hot linking the images from google drive is not possible so I’ve included the clickable links instead (shared public).

    I’ll try to figure out how to make the images appearing in the post this evening :).

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  • Module Developer

    The mirror looks good!

    But yes, the light transmission is either very low (like 1% low) and/or the screen has a weak light source, is it LED or CCFL backlight on your screen? Do you know the specified light transmission of the mirror you have?
    The reflection is good though, which is what you really want in a mirror ^_^

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  • Module Developer

    Really nice! Clean build inside. Like it! 🙂

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  • A

    @broberg
    I’m afraid I can’t add too many details.
    The mirror I’ve used is this one:
    https://www.glashandelonline.com/spiegels/confrontatiespiegel/confrontatiespiegel/
    but it doesn’t indicate how much reflection/transmission it has (probably should’ve asked the shop first but I didn’t think about it untill I could test the mirror for the first time).
    I also did a test with my phone behind the mirror, with its screen at maximum brightness and this gave pretty much the same effect so I think the problem is mainly due to the transmission of the mirror.

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