Introduce yourself!

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

cowboysdude

OH I agree!! Sounds like you are on the same road I am… @strawberry-3-141 helped me today… there is a module but I wanted it to do something a little bit different so I tried my hand at tweaking it… I was close but he showed me the error and it works now! HUGE Thanks @strawberry-3-141 by the way!!

I don’t know if you realize this and some don’t … some of the people building stuff and helping us all out don’t even have mirrors!!! THAT is utterly and mind blowing amazing!!!

The 32" will be a while :) Yes honestly I was really thinking laptop motherboard… quieter can get smaller power supplies to run them :) OR a mini ITX you can use laptop power supplies on some of them too!

So in a nutshell I’m waiting on an open source thermostat that runs the heating/cooling and is wifi AND bluetooth… then I’ll get to building the actual mirror itself… [MY parents have a 40" TV they don’t want or need soooooooooo LOL]…

Welcome and I’m glad you’re here… learning is awesome and it can be fun!

Thanks to @MichMich , @ianperrin , @strawberry-3-141 and all the other developers!!! Too many to mention!

JediJah

Hi All,
I’m Shonari. I’m 34 and live in Brooklyn, NY. I work at a startup building cellphone charging kiosks. Love to make and have a new found affinity for Raspberry Pi. Made a MagicMirror last December and recently decided to upgrade it to a Pi3 and MagicMirror2. Love the modules. Thanks to all those who contribute their time to this great project.

Cheers,

cowboysdude

Welcome @JediJah