The construction is much like everyone else’s mirror. The only real challenge was that the computer monitor was smaller than the frame and the aspect ratios were just not going to match up (the frame is more square than your typical monitor). Building a box around the monitor wouldn’t touch the edges of the frame.

My solution was to build two internal runners to support the monitor in place. I think getting the two channels routed properly was like 50% of the construction process.

And everything in place:

@ejach2000 - The tradeoff decisions in making a magic mirror are basically as follows:

You can get a cheaper mirror surface by going with two-way acrylic. I used TAP Plastics and it worked okay. The two way glass produced better results, but you will have to decide if the difference is worth the extra cost.

The other option is to purchase a two way mirror film and attach it to a piece of glass. This way takes patience and practice, but it is a decent way to save money.

Don’t try to combine two pieces of glass into one mirror. The seam between the pieces will be very visible and will annoy you.

You do not need a specific monitor. There are features that make the process easier for you during construction. Most importantly, IMHO, is that the power and HDMI connectors point down and not directly away from the screen. Secondly is the ability to accept an HDMI connection (lack of HDMI can be overcome with adapters).

HTH.

@aecandroid - Please check out this guide on how to use the markdown features of the forum. Then go back and properly block out your config.js file. That will make debugging your code much easier.

@hall1458 Wow. Dude, I’m sorry that nobody has stepped in to help you out. I’m not much of a *nix guy, but I’ve been dealing with this at work for various reasons. I’ll do what I can.

The NTP service should synchronize your Pi’s clock with one of many time servers out on the internet. If you get a terminal onto your Pi and type ps ax | grep ntpd you should see this line in return: 602 ? Ss 0:04 /usr/sbin/ntpd -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -g -u 106:111. Some parts will be different. This is good. If all you see is grep --color=auto ntp then the NTP service isn’t running. Post back here and we’ll get that fixed.

Assuming that NTP is running on your pi, you will want to check the configuration of your NTP server. Type nano /etc/ntp.conf. If you see a blank screen/file, then you have a problem. Assuming you do see a file, you want to look for the following lines:

# pool: 
server 0.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 1.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 2.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 3.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst

These are the servers that your Pi will be checking for a valid time. You can manually check them as well. Exit the /etc/ntp.conf file and type ntpq -pn and wait. You should see something like this:

     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
+173.71.73.207   .PPS.            1 u  856 1024  377   18.624   -1.660   5.766
+66.228.59.187   128.59.0.245     2 u  468 1024  377   27.636    0.276   6.356
*199.102.46.76   .GPS.            1 u  839 1024  377   37.422    0.189   4.440
+23.239.24.67    200.98.196.212   2 u  713 1024  377   48.940   -1.173   2.743

At least one of those lines should have an asterisk at the beginning. Give it a go and report back.

Fantastic work. Great job on sourcing the parts.

@dazza120 - I use black construction paper. I cut it to fit the exposed areas of the glass and the monitor holds it in place.

@Lorenz - You can configure your mirror to use the built-in Chromium browser instead of electron. You’ll need to do the following:

1. modify your startup script to go node serveronly instead of the usual npm start.
2. Set the home page of the chromium browser to http://localhost:8080.
3. Put the browser into kiosk mode.
4. Set the browser to start on boot.

I played around with this a bit. In the end, running omxplayer with a resized and rotated video was the way to go. Oh, and I re-edited a few videos together in order to provide a more seamless experience. I’ll see about capturing some video tomorrow and uploading it.

I used pm2 to manage a quick script to keep the video going in case of failure. Overall, I’m quite pleased. Now to do the same to my office mirror…

So that’s neat an all, but here comes the downside: The mirror that I repurposed to use in this installation isn’t suitable for a Magic Mirror. It’s designed to have an abstract flame-like pattern projected upon it. The coating that gives it the one-way effect also has a diffusing agent. So everything is blurry looking through the glass and it gets worse the farther away from the glass you place the image. It wasn’t so bad when I was testing it before I built the mirror, as I would hold my smartphone up against it and it looked acceptable. But the thickness of the bezel and the design of the frame is enough to make anything unreadable. So I bit the bullet and ordered new glass in the same size. It should arrive at the office next week. I’ll take my tools to work and swap the glass after hours one day.

The not-suitable mirror is taken from one of these: Dynasty Wall Mount LED Fireplace

@meobeou - The smart mirror glass from www.twowaymirrors.com is 30% transparent and works really well.

I experimented with this a bit yesterday. Thanks to @rvdgeer for the hint and @Jopyth for the initial code to start.

I ripped a YouTube video to disk and uploaded it to my Pi, putting it in the vendor folder. Adding this to my config.js was surprisingly effective (the rotate 90 is due to the video being designed to be projected on a window):

{     module: "helloworld",
      position: "fullscreen_below",  
      config: {
                text: "<video src='vendor/halloween.mp4' autoplay loop style='transform:rotate(90deg); position:absolute; top:50%;left:30%; height:50%'></video>"
               }
 },

Video of the ghost in the mirror can be found here: https://youtu.be/6hb1N1tYcPc

As an aside, this morning I changed the command to omxplayer -p -o local --loop --alpha 85 boo.mp4 to cut the sound from the video file. It woke me up when the mirror switched on this morning at 5 AM.

@pascal456 Thank you. I find your build process intriguing.

Do you have any concerns about the adhesion of the glass and the tape? I suppose I don’t know much about frameless mirrors. I have no idea how commercial mirrors are constructed.

@achanaksadma - The type of monitor doesn’t really matter all that much. Your basic Magic Mirror is displaying large white text on a black background. Any monitor will be able to display it. It is preferable that your monitor have an HDMI port that points down towards the monitor stand instead of straight back. But that’s not a critical requirement. It is pretty much a requirement that you use an LCD monitor. Nobody but nobody has used a CRT monitor for their Magic Mirror, for weight and size reasons.

For the type of mirror, you’re looking to purchase a two way mirror with about 30 to 50% light transmission. That means that any light source behind the mirror will have about 30-50% of that light make it through the glass. If you find a company that makes a one-way mirror with these specs, go for it. One way mirrors are the same as two-way mirrors.

I’ve used www.twowaymirrors.com a few times and have been quite happy with the service.

Virginia, USA

@aayush447 Serveronly is included with the MagicMirror framework. What it does is skip displaying the interface on the Raspberry Pi via Electron and the HDMI video output. You can still see the interface by pointing a web browser (especially the browser included with the Raspberry Pi operating system) at the Pi. But the Pi itself will still display the desktop and/or command prompt.

This is especially useful for people who remote in to their Pi for development, multiple displays or remote access. For example, you could have one Pi run the MagicMirror framework and have a mirror in your bathroom, a display in your kitchen and a display in your man cave all showing the same output of the Pi.

I use node serveronly during my development on my office PC. It lets me use a web browser to view the interface, which I can resize, move to a different monitor, etc. Otherwise, Electron would take over one entire monitor to display the output of the Magic Mirror framework.

@cowboysdude Well I’m going to be humming that one all day today. Pretty cool!

@steed - yes, you should. I used black construction paper from Michaels.

One more data point: The Pi behind my office mirror was doing okay, until I enabled the MMM-Snow module. Short version is that I had to downgrade Electron to 1.4.15 but now it’s running pretty well with 50 snowflakes.