A thin MM with metal frame, hidden IR camera and 32" Inch HDTV

SvenSommer

@j.e.f.f Thanks you!
I’ve used a Samsung UE32J6250 it’s a 32" inch HDTV. Samsung released the J6250 Serie 6 with several dimensions starting with 32" inch up to 60" inch. They all share the same hardware in the back, and should be nice to use for a Magic Mirror. Very thin, if solder your own power supply cable to the board.
They only differ a bit in the price.

What TV did you use for your My Full-Length Mirror with a “Smart” Top Half ? Are you planning a bigger one?
I really hope the prices will fall soon and the bigger sizes become more affordable!

j.e.f.f

@SvenSommer Is used the Samsung J5205. It was one of only two Samsung 32" TVs available to me.

I thought about using a 40" UHD TV for the pixel density, but it would have doubled the cost of the TV, and I was unsure if / how well the raspberry pi would handle the high resolution. I ended up building mine 1.5 meters tall, with the TV in the top half. Works out nicely, although I have it engage into screensaver mode when idle, so it acts as a piece of moving art on the wall. It would be AMAZING to use the full height for the screen.

Maybe I’ll build a V2 at some point to tackle this…

In any case, I love your metal frame, and how thin you manages to keep yours. Mine is about double the thickness, and it’s HEAVY! (about 22kg) I originally had the same idea as you to mount the TV like normal and hang the mirror off if it, but once I realized how heavy this was, I didn’t think the TV frame could support it. so I ended up screwing the mounting bracket supports to the frame itself, which in turn further pushes it out from the wall another 2-3 cm.

Great job!

SvenSommer

@cowboysdude Thank you!
I’m very curious how well the touch will work.

If I understand correctly, do you want to build a command panel?
Have you ever looked at OpenHab? This is also open source and designed for the control of a smart home.

If I’m not deceived, there are even modules that show the location plans of Openhab in the Magic Mirror. Have you seen them?

cowboysdude

@SvenSommer Yes that’s what I’m doing. It’s taking some time because I am writing most of my own modules to cater to what I need.

The touch part works really well!!! I’m thinking between @strawberry-3-141 voice module and the touch this is working quite well and really fast.

As for OpenHab I will be using that for the thermostat as the guys that built it use it for their interface…
https://hestiapi.com/

I have not seen any plans with OpenHab yet. I really just haven’t had time to sit down and look at it the way I should. To get the thermostat to talk to the mirror I will have to use MQTT with OpenHab… Can’t wait to get it working!!! :)

Right now the version I have is the non American version but they are working out the bugs and will get it working for the US soon :) .

Do you have experience with OpenHab?

Arthur

Wow, that’s a nice mirror. Really great work!

I also liked your blog! I’m already looking forward to the other projects on your site.

SvenSommer

@cowboysdude What are hardware are you going to use? I tried to run the MMM-Facial-Recognition by paviro and the MMM-Voice by fewieden on a RaspberryPi 3 with really disappointing results.
I appreciate the evaluation of the touch display runs on its own processor!?

HestiaPi looks really promising. Please share your experiences!

I’ve been using OpenHab for over two years now. It’s really great if you want to connect several pieces of smart home hardware from different companies. It makes it also very easy to log your data on your own databases without sending data to a cloud service. As I’m a big fan of aggregated data in useful charts I’m really loving this!
They are working on a big version change, that should by the adaption of new users. Maybe now its a good time to check it out ;)

SvenSommer

@Arthur
Thanks for the flowers!

j.e.f.f

@SvenSommer I was talking to one of my co-workers about the facial recognition module, and he believes he can make it much faster. The issue, as he sees it, is not the actual recognition of whose face is in the image, but in all of the up-front work involved in preparing the comparison. First the image needs to be captured from the camera, then it has to be analyzed for the presence of one or more faces. Those parts of the image are cropped, resized and converted to grayscale, all on the CPU which does the operations one pixel at a time. The actual recognition of the face in the image is, according to him, the easy part and not the performance bottleneck.

He’s looking into whether any or all of this can be offloaded to the GPU and executed in ways that are far more efficient. Who knows… we might have good facial recognition working soon!

That said, I’ve found less and less practical use for separate display profiles, now having had my mirror on the wall for a few weeks. It turns out that most of the information on the mirror is useful to everyone in my household, so different profiles really only differ by one or two modules, and I’m not having problems fitting everything on to the screen at once. I would like the mirror to be able to greet me, however, when I stand in front of it, as it adds that cool factor. But I doubt I’m going to use it to actually change the display of the mirror.

cowboysdude

@SvenSommer I’m not a fan of using the Facial Recognition part… just don’t want a camera on it. That’s the only reason. MMM-Voice is a really great module!! On a Pi yes it is a bit slow… but I’m running a mini itx with Intel chip and Ubuntu so the speed is really good…

Actually this is what I"m using:

Mini Itx with intel chip
8 gig ram
120gb SSD
Wireless mini card

SO far it’s been awesome performance wise and the voice is instant… and it works great plus it can be incorporated into other modules as he wrote out the instructions on how to do it :)

I will check out OpenHab this week as I"m on vacation [holiday] … HesitaPi is going to be awesome once all the bugs are out and honestly it’s real close now!

What I’m REALLY curious about is who built your metal frame?

cowboysdude

@j.e.f.f said in A thin MM with metal frame, hidden IR camera and 32" Inch HDTV:

That said, I’ve found less and less practical use for separate display profiles, now having had my mirror on the wall for a few weeks. It turns out that most of the information on the mirror is useful to everyone in my household, so different profiles really only differ by one or two modules, and I’m not having problems fitting everything on to the screen at once. I would like the mirror to be able to greet me, however, when I stand in front of it, as it adds that cool factor. But I doubt I’m going to use it to actually change the display of the mirror.

That’s exactly why I didn’t bother with it. Not because it’s not a good module but because I really don’t need it.