Introduce yourself!

KirAsh4

@paviro, stop breaking things! Your video link above is broken.

knewmoovmnt

Hi all,
I’m Mike out of SA, TX . Signed up because I am going to start to build my 1st mirror. A reason why I joined, I’m having trouble finding a mirror that will work for this project. There are a lot of 1 way 2 way mirrors on the Web and I was honestly looking for someone to link a good source to pick one up. Any feedback would be very appreciated. I don’t have the dimensions yet, so a vendor who can sell varying dimensions would be nice.

Thanks,
Mike

yutarochan

Hey guys! My name is Yuya and I just finished my Freshman year at the University of Penn State studying Computer Science, and also interning at the Almaden Research Center in IBM this summer.

I was just looking for another side project to contribute to and found this to be very cool looking and interesting. I’ve got several colleagues here at IBM also working on IoT and learned a lot from just sitting next to them working on these things. My main interests primarily lie in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Human Computer Interaction and Affective Computing… so hopefully I can contribute some pretty neat modules. If you guys have any interesting ideas dealing with machine learning, computer vision and such, feel free to let me know!

paviro

@yutarochan it would be amazing if you could help improve (or help rewrite :D ) my MMM-Facial-Recognition module using machine learning!

mikmonken

I’m Mike 36 from England, I follow instructions (sometimes successfully) that’s about it for me.

I first started dabbling with an RPI when I wanted to create a fermentation chamber for homebrewing beer, so I built a diy brewpi cracked open a fridge and hey presto it worked.

Next I made my first arduino shield so I could declutter my wiring and this was my first venture into soldering (and soldering a pfet at that)

I consider myself enthusiastic at making fun useful items, and persevering to get things to work.

My enthusiasm far out weights my capability I have no coding knowledge but I somehow manage to fumble about and get what I’m looking for as you’ll probably see from my posts.

My current challenge is trying to get my $9 CHIP to see my arduino over USB but that’s for a different forum.

Anyway loving this project I’m trying to use a 37inch that’s colour is broken and clad it relatively inexpensively with a two way mirror.

byoung2010

Hi everybody,

I’m Brandon (24) from Los Angeles, California. My experience and knowledge with coding — and raspberry pi in general — is very similar to that of @mikmonken above. I can follow instructions fairly well, but I know nothing about coding. I am very eager to learn coding, but have very little time to devote to it due to work, school, and a wife who likes to monopolize my time. ;D I’m amazed with the work that you all have done with the Magic Mirror project and I hope I can help contribute to it someday.

My first rpi project I undertook was the retropie. I easily figured out the software side of that, but then again all I had to do was follow simple instructions. I still haven’t started the hardware portion — I’m saving that for a later project when I can devote more time to it.

The second rpi project I undertook was installing an ambilight kit behind my wall mounted TV through Lightberry. This was slightly more difficult, but still only required me to follow instructions (I love the effect the abmilight gives while watching TV by the way).

I have now started the software portion of the Magic Mirror. I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew with different projects, especially considering my lack of even basic knowledge when it comes to coding. However, I have really enjoyed the project thus far and I am learning a ton through this project. I currently have the Magic Mirror running fairly smoothly through my desktop monitor. After I finish adding all the cool modules you guys have created, I’ll start to build the actual mirror itself. The end goal is for this to be a Christmas present for my wife. Who knows, I might make a couple more for the rest of my family too. Thank you to all of you who have contributed to this project. I look forward to learning from all of you.

kapsolas

Hi,

I’m in the US and been looking to play with a magic mirror for some time! Excited to have found this group!

dmcinnes

Hello!

I’m Doug, 41, I’m in Portland, OR in the US. I am a software engineer for work and I dabble in a lot of things, but mostly electronics and game development.

I originally found MichMich’s awesome mirror project a couple of years ago, and made one for myself. Though I got discouraged after corrupting two different SD cards and dropped it for other projects. Was excited to see the new MagicMirror² project and this great forum!

During my original work had rebuilt some of the mirror code, and even hacked together facial recognition using RaspiCam (my mirror has a Rasberry Pi Camera sneaked up behind the glass at the top).
https://github.com/dmcinnes/MirrorMirror
https://github.com/dmcinnes/mirrormirror-camcv
It’s nowhere near as nice as easy to set up as paviro’s facial recognition module!

I recently posted a module I ported from my old mirror code, Forecast-IO weather:
https://github.com/dmcinnes/MMM-forecast-io

I’ll post pictures of my mirror once I get it all working again :)

Mitchfarino

I’m Mitch from the UK, I’m a BI Consultant who specialises in SQL Server.

I’m building this mirror for my kitchen, and looking to replace the family calendar with it (plus other features like commute times etc). We have 4 kids, so it can be difficult to keep track of all our activities etc!

At some point I’m hoping to make a move and develop a module.

I’ve also just joined my local hackspace which has just formed, and I’ve been showing off the mirror to those guys too!

Sunburned

Hello All,
Name is Angelo from New York, USA, 33 years old. Coding experience, virtually zero but I built a CNC machine from scratch a couple of years back. A friend saw it and it and landed me an IT job at his company, just an entry level gig doing IT support but hey, it’s a start right? My MBA is in international business so the career change scared the heck out of me. So far I am really happy with it though. I have always been a maker and having just finished my ride on cooler I needed a new project. Enter the smart mirror. Really looking forward to offering and getting advice from the forum

Great to meet everyone!!!

cowboysdude

Hey guys my name is John and I’m 53 and from Upstate NY [about 5 hours away from NYC]…

I like to try new things that I have NO experience with such as programming, etc. So I would say that the help I’ve gotten here and the learning I’m getting is priceless to me.

I was looking for a ‘Magic Mirror’ that I could install and there are a few out there… I found this one and feel in love with it instantly. Now I have people asking me all the time ‘can you build me one?’… I tell them I can but you can also build one yourself… I am not, nor will I ever try to profit from others work because I think when someone makes something and ‘donates’ it others should not benefit from it like that.

I thought at one time of using my RPI3 to build a ‘car stereo’ but found that there was little to no help … so I found an image that was in German and helped get it translated over into English so that other could use the software to create their own… so now there’s an English version floating around on my google drive for people.

I am always glad to help others if I can. This is what this is all about and I really appreciate the hard work that’s been done!! I’m going to try to port an NFL scoreboard over that I wrote in PHP for a joomla module on my website… why? I don’t know… I’m hoping to learn something from it!

yawns

Hi everyone,

my name is Stefan, I’m 34, married, living in Germany (near cologne). I always enjoyed developing Software so I completed a 2 years education and ended as a software engineer in a small company designing websites and backend for tourist related topics. I noticed I did but like doing that for the rest of my life so I was looking for alternatives. Now I am working as a senior IT analyst in a TV production company.

Over the last years I spent my free time rebuilding my car, swapping the engine, adding aircondition, changing the drive train, removing rust and getting a fresh paint in the original colour. This project was finished last year, just in time for marriage.
I always liked building things, working with wood and glue and electronics, I can’t do “nothing” and I wanted to play around with a raspberry for a long time, so I recently bought one with some sensors and stuff.
We just bought a house which is about to be built so I plan to create a smart mirror on a central place in the house, get the wiring done to avoid cables hanging around.
In addition 4 months ago we rescued a small pitbull called Chico from the shelter and are now doing our best to educate this little boy.

Best regards, Stefan

mahabub66

This post is deleted!

CCoates

HI I’m Chris, 32 Financial Software Specialist (tech support basically) from Newcastle, UK.

Been a Pi user for about a year I have 3 at present, 1 running a robot coded with Scratch (with my Son 7)
a Pi zero runing Kodi
a third in the post …

Currently aquiring parts to make a magic mirror after reading about in the Magpi Magazine

My coding experience is so far limited to scratch and i (somehow) figured out a code to connect my pi to my NAS box

jreyes

Hello! Johann here, programmer by day, and programmer by night too, weekends also! Started building my version of a smart mirror and doing research found magic mirror and community. Full of ideas and inspiration, good place to see explore the cutting edge of mirror technology!

So hi everyone.

psk

Hey guys! greetings from India.
My name is Prasanth, and I’m 24. Used to be a software engineer. Recently, I got a knee injury while playing football,
had to undergo surgery and I’ll on bed rest till January.

So hat’s how I came across magic mirror. Oh! the forum!! this is brimming with creativity. so good to be part of it.
I’m new to pi and nodejs and I’ve been following this for 3 weeks now, and the support seems to be amazing. \m/

My raspberry pi is on the way :D. Hopefully I will get to setup one for myself. and some day may be contribute to the community.

I’ve seen some voice recognition modules here. so thought of making one myself using IBM’s watson speech to text API.
I’m still working on it. you can find it here.

see you around guys. Cheers.

darrene

Hi all, Darren here from the UK. I’m 44 and just started my first MagicMirror2 project.

I’ve had a play with Evan Cohen’s Smart Mirror in the past which I like and will at some point possibly try to merge some of the code into my MagicMirror.

I have an Iiyama 27" LED monitor on the way and some 2-way acrylic. In the meantime I’m developing my install on an RPI3

The idea I have for my mirror workflow goes along the lines of;

facialrecognition -> detecting someone wakes the mirror up
person not recognised -> the mirror displays a default set of modules
person is recognised -> the mirror displays a lightweight personalised set of modules (ie calendar, fitbit, time to work if it’s a weekday, time to town if it’s a weekend)
speech recognition to bring up other modules as needed

It’s a bit of a mountain to climb given that my JS and Python skills are non-existent at the moment :)

strawberry 3.141

@darrene there are face and voice recognition modules already built

cowboysdude

I LOVE Evan’s mirror… the voice stuff is quick but you are limited to 50 calls per day…

PLUS there is NO way to make 3rd party modules for it… you come here and you can request things to have your mirror do and someone builds it… why? Because they want to :)

Evan has no plans for 3rd party modules which means whatever is there you have and that’s it.

I played with his and still have an SD card with a running mirror on it but I kept coming back to this one because of the possibilities… people develop amazing things all the time…

Since being here people have helped me greatly!! NFL module, Scheduler module…the list goes on and on NOT to mention a small Alarm clock mirror… that people basically build software to help with that such as a Touch alarm…

Evan is an awesome guy but like I said it’s limited… I needed/wanted it to do more… to fit me.

Because of this place and with a TON of help my next plan is a 32" livingroom mirror that can run my house… it’s being worked on… new territory takes time :)

@strawberry-3-141 has built a voice module that already controls several modules here… @paviro has built facial recognition for this mirror that works well … speech recognition is a tall order but I believe sooner or later it’ll get done…

Gotta remember a Raspberry pi can only handle so much… that’s why my 32" will be run on a full size motherboard [laptop or micro board, not sure yet]…

These are ALL great people doing great things to help many to fit their mirrors to their needs… it’s pretty amazing.

darrene

Thanks for the welcome both - @cowboysdude, I couldn’t have put it better. That’s what led me here to be honest - the thriving community and the comprehensive, pluggable modules :)

I like the way Evan’s mirror works but I think I need to emulate/build on that using MM2 and cherry-picking some modules as my starting point.

I’ve been playing around with some of the 3rd party modules already (I love the remote control!) and I’ve had a quick try with the facial recognition - I need to sit down for longer with that. I almost got there having gone through the training, then just hit a few snags

I’ve been dithering over which voicecontrol module to run with. I’ll probably try the various offerings one-by-one and see which seems a natural fit

I’ll look forward to seeing the 32" project unfold - that’s a monster! :) I must admit I’ve been thinking that with the workload imposed by the various recognition modules It might pay to move to a small laptop to do the heavy-lifting, but then it seems to make sense to go the Windows 10 route, as the realsense camera, cortana, etc are built in and I’d benefit from gesture controls out of the box, which shifts me away from the MM environment…

I think I’m going to start small and work my way up. As I add more functionality, if the Pi starts to struggle that might signify the point at which I need to build a second, laptop-powered mirror with more whistles and bells