43" Magic Hallway Mirror

stephenmelody

Thought I’d share my build with you guys, I’d like to thank @Zach for his very helpful guide, as I pretty much followed it step by step.

No photos of the build other than the finished product, but it’s a 43" 4K TCL TV as the screen (because the majority of the connections are on the side, not the back) and Pilkington Mirrorpane glass as the front end - for a 43 inch screen, cut to my exact dimensions was $175+tax!! Much cheaper than the twowaymirror.com smart tv glass. I think their glass is Pilkington Mirrorvue which my glass supplier was quoting $215. I preferred the reflection from the Mirrorpane over the Mirrorvue so went for that - the glass company sent me samples free of charge - shout out to Rex Glass in Pittsburgh.

My next step is to get the Facial Recognition module working so it’ll show different items depending on whether it is me or the GF stood in front of the camera, but I can’t seem to get it working with my USB Logitech webcam… I’ll post a help request on that.

Anyway, here it is… thoughts / questions are welcome!

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broberg

Looks really good! The frame is really nice.

I also have the Mirropane Chrome from Pilkington, But I actually find it a tad to dark and restrictive as of lighttransmission (3%).

stephenmelody

The glass I’m using has reflectance of 68% and transmission of 11%

https://www.pilkington.com/en/us/products/product-categories/special-applications/pilkington-mirropane#brochures

Mirror view has reflectance of between 53% and 76% with a transmission of between 20 and 45%

I was just happier with what the Mirropane gave me.

broberg

@stephenmelody

Aahh I see, Mine is the Mirropane Chrome (I couldn’t order the regular Mirropane in My country)
(http://www.pilkington.com/sv-se/se/produkter/funktionsomrade/specialglas/pilkington-mirropane-chrome#broschyrer)

Mine has ha Reflectance of 62% on coated and 53% on glass site (and I’m using the glass site since I don’t want to be able to damage the coating). And a light transmission of 3%.

11% is actually what I’ve would have liked on it! That’s low enough to get rid of most of the backlight in normally lit rooms but still high enough to see everything properly. I’m really envious of you right now!!

cowboysdude

VERY nice job!

stephenmelody

I forgot to mention that I also have the rpi on a z-wave socket so I can hard reset it if I need to from the Samsung SmartThings app.

The TV is a TCL and SmartThings has a device handler for it, so when both my girlfriend and I leave the house, the TV turns off, when one of us returns the tv comes back on, it also shuts down overnight and comes back on in the morning. I’m using Webcore on top of SmartThings to do that.

I also did the same as @zach and added both USB and hdmi into the frame for easy access to the rpi or the tv.