100x50 cm - 32" LED TV Mirror

mcg

Hi all,

at very first a big thanks to @MichMich! I’m already following since v1 of MM. By then it was just “a crazy idea” to build such a cool mirror myself. Well, times changed!
Additionally of course a big thanks to @Goldjunge_Chriz for making such a slim mirror pane available! I participated in the first order and am pretty happy how the end product turned out!

Story

I finally finished the first version of my mirror.
The hardest part for me was to keep things simple and to finally get it done. Beforehand, I read a lot of very interesting stuff starting from gestures, over voice control up to facial regognition that I almost lost myself in dreaming about all those achievments rather than starting and finalizing the first shot.

As - by the time I started - I ‘just’ had an old LED TV at hand, it became the scope of my project. I say ‘just’ because it is relatively thick and during the long process of making the mirror I got another 32" TV which is a lot thinner. But the design of the frame was already made to fit the thicker one and so I sticked to it.

To reduce the thickness as much as possible, I stripped down all PCBs and moved them below the TV. Since the TV had speakers built-in, I recycled them and attached them to the frame. For the sound to leave the frame I drilled 4 holes on each side and 3D-printed customized grids. The whole installation weighs 12kg, which I think is still very well handable. The frame was chosen by my girlfriend. We bought it off some online painitng framing shop fitting the mirror I ordered in this amazing forum.

Tech

As I already wrote, I was looking for an elaborate solution to switch the mirror on and off. From my point of view this would be a camera, being able to detect both movement (first step) and faces (later on, if needed).
For now I just have a WiFi switchable socket to power off the TV completely; the Pi runs 24/7.
To get the TV to standy I currently have two options:

I’m still able to switch the TV on and off using the remote control. The IR receiver is situated behind the frame, but reachable if directly pointed at (in between wall and frame).
I installed cec-utils which enabled me to control the TV via HDMI CEC and a bash script.

I didn’t investigate the HDMI CEC capabilities of my particular TV too closely as I just needed three things:

on (from standby)
off (to standby)
choose the correct input source

What I read is, that manufacturers implement the CEC standard in very different ways and depths. For my model it seems very limited, but I got all the above points to work whichs is sufficient for my right now.
During weekdays cron triggers the CEC-script , so that I get the latest news and infos before I leave for work. When I come home again I start and stop the TV manually when needed.

Next steps

Since it takes the TV at least 20 seconds to boot from standby, I thought a lot about how this time could be reduced. My idea is to make the TV’s LED backlight switchable/controlable and keep the screen itself running. I already figured out where the corresponding pin is situated on the PCB and what its logic level have to be for both on and off state.

Additionally I need a better trigger than the remote control or the time (via cron) to switch the TV on or off.
I guess I’m gonna generate some quick win with a simple motion sensor. Later on, if I find the time to install the camera I’d like to implement motion detection and maybe even facial recognotion.

Modules

Thanks to all coders!

Parts

part	amount
Mirror ordered via @Goldjunge_Chriz	180€
Picture frame	150€
TV	spare - 0€
Raspberry Pi 3 incl. accessories	~ 60€
Wood for the frame, hardware, etc.	~ 15€
Sum	~ 405€

Pictures

Final thoughts

So, please let me know what you think.
From time to time I’m gonna update this post to show you some of my progress.

Cheers!
Marc

mcg

Placeholder to provide updates later on.

Mykle1

@mcg

Nice work sir!

mcg

@mykle1 Thank you!

muffinimal

Impressive!

For now I just want to make a small mirror with an old 17" monitor I have lying around, but posts like yours are gently pushing me in another direction.

Thanks for taking the time to describe your process!

bhepler

Great work! It gives me a couple ideas, in fact…

mcg

@muffinimal & @bhepler happy to be inspirational!