@negativeflare There are a couple things to check. For starters, make sure that you copied the config.js.sample to config.js. All lowercase. And it must be in the ~/MagicMirror/config folder.

Assuming those are true, copy & paste your config.js in this thread, using the markdown commands. We’ll take a look at it and see if we notice anything.

Hrm. New problem: After a few hours, the screen goes white. This obviously will not do. Back to the drawing board.

I found this in the motion log:

[1] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:02] motion_loop: End of event 74
[1] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:04] motion_loop: fps: 3.999920 idle 26.67% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:09] motion_loop: fps: 3.998465 idle 24.89% over 0.00%
[1] [ERR] [ENC] [Nov 15 20:25:10] ffmpeg_put_frame: Error while writing video frame:
[1] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:10] motion_loop: Thread exiting
[1] [INF] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:10] motion_cleanup: Calling vid_close() from motion_cleanup
[1] [INF] [VID] [Nov 15 20:25:10] vid_close: calling video source cleanup
[1] [ALR] [VID] [Nov 15 20:25:10] MMAL Camera cleanup
[0] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:11] main: Threads finished
[0] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:12] main: Motion terminating
[0] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:12] motion_remove_pid: Removed process id file (pid file).
[0] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:12] motion_remove_pid: Closing logfile (/tmp/motion.log).

Hey @Neha-Afreen. The Raspberry Pi itself doesn’t require much in order to run. You can buy one at Amazon pretty easily. You’ll need:

• Raspberry Pi 3
• USB cable for power
• HDMI cable for video
• MicroSD card with the operating system
  You can get most of that together in a Complete Raspberry Pi Starter Kit

That should get you started with the Raspberry Pi portion of the project. Let us know when you’re ready for the carpentry part!

@bibi I haven’t tried it with a USB cam, but it should work. In the config file, there is a switch to throw if you’re using a USB cam (and different switches to throw if you’re using a network cam - which raises interesting possibilities).

My camera is mounted above the monitor & behind the one-way acrylic. My monitor is smaller than my acrylic by about 2" on a side. This is good in that it’s a very clean installation and you don’t see a camera when you look at the mirror. It’s bad in that it cuts down on the light reaching the camera, preventing the facial recognition from working.

@creepwood If you’re not happy with the way the module calculates the dates, you’re welcome to write your own.

See, this way it’s not an argument. It’s a suggestion.

@cowboysdude Possibly something like the Zotac Zbox? It’s probably overkill. And at that price… it’s more expensive than the rest of your hardware.

@reidbarber If you’re not going to go through the mirror and into the wall, you have a couple options. One is you can have brackets that attach to your monitor and hold the mirror in place, top & bottom. These would tie the glass to your monitor and hold it in place by clips on the edges. Unfortunately, it means you can see the clips on the edge of your frameless mirror.

The other alternative is to mount some sort of bracket on the back of the glass that can be hooked over the top of the monitor. Without the bezel, my monitor is about 3/8" thick at the edge. A bracket that is roughly the width of the top edge of your monitor (in whatever orientation) that is essentially a u-shaped channel might do it. You’d want to attach the channel to your glass with a strong epoxy. At that point, the glass would just hang over the top edge of your monitor.

@hologramicgirl I bought a relatively cheap aluminum french cleat from a hardware store. It claims it’s rated for 100 lbs and my mirror maybe weighs 30.

First, I want thank @alexyak for his motioncontrol module. Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t work on my Mirror due to new security controls put in place by the Node.js team. Apparently it’s not a wise move to let client-side Javascript access the webcam attached to your server. Who knew?

In the end, I ended up seeking another solution. The Facial Recognition module didn’t work due to the reduction in light coming through the mirror itself. But I do get an image. I started browsing sites of people who have turned their Raspi into a security system. It turns out, someone ported the Motion framework to Raspberry Pi and called it MMAL-Motion.

After a lot of reading, I found a Wiki for MMAL Motion. Following the steps for Jessie, I did the following:

• Change to your home directory. cd ~
• Install the library dependencies (just copy & paste into the terminal. I wouldn’t want to do this by hand)
  sudo apt-get install -y libjpeg-dev libavformat56 libavformat-dev libavcodec56 libavcodec-dev libavutil54 libavutil-dev libc6-dev zlib1g-dev libmysqlclient18 libmysqlclient-dev libpq5 libpq-dev
• Download the precompiled binary archive file:
  wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ruqgv1h65zufr6/motion-mmal-lowflyerUK-20151114.tar.gz
• Uncompress the archive file
  tar -zxvf motion-mmal-lowflyerUK-20151114.tar.gz

This will put a configuration file called motion-mmalcam-both.conf and a folder called motion in your home folder. At this step you can test it if you like, but for my purposes I needed to make a few changes tot the config file. So, make a copy and edit the copy.
cp motion-mmalcam-both.conf motion.conf
nano motion.conf
I played around with the configuration quite a bit until I found one I liked. But for our purposes (turning the display on when someone comes near) you only have to make a few changes.
framerate 4 - run the detection video at 4 frames per second
threshold 2500 - increase the # of pixels to trigger the screen. We want them to get close to the mirror
minimum_motion_frames 2 - Motion must be detected in 2 consecutive frames (at 4 FPS)
event_gap 60 - This is important. This is how long in seconds after no motion the screen will turn off.
output_pictures off - Do not save images
ffmpeg_output_movies off - Do not record video
stream_port 0 - Turn off remote viewing
webcontrol_port 0 - Turn off HTTP control of camera
on_event_start vcgencmd display_power 1 - Important! This is the command to turn on the screen
on_event_end vcgencmd display_power 0 - Important! This is the command to turn off the screen

Save your motion.conf file and now you can test it out by entering ./motion -c motion.conf. If you stay very still for a minute, the screen should turn off. Move close to the mirror, and everything should come back after a couple seconds.

Additionally, you are missing a closed square bracket in your configuration for the VoiceControl module. After you define your keywords, you need to close the array. The second to last line of your voicecontrol configuration is where it needs to go. Like so:

{
	module: 'voicecontrol',
	position: 'bottom_left',
	config: {
	models: [
		{
			keyword: "Show Camera",
			description: "Say 'Show Camera' to display camera",
			file: "showCamera.pmdl",
			message: "SHOW_CAMERA"
		},
		{
			keyword: "Hide Camera",
			description: "Say 'Hide Camera' to hide camera",
			file: "hideCamera.pmdl",
			message: "HIDE_CAMERA"
		},
		{
			keyword: "Selfie",
			description: "Say 'Selfie' when camera is visible",
			file: "selfie.pmdl",
			message: "SELFIE"
		}
	]  // **HERE**
},