Indeed. I got a couple ideas from reading his blog.

I like this idea! It would be pretty simple to buy one of those DVDs, rip the video you want and then load it onto your mirror. Play the image in a module, possibly with some basic timer & looping controls.

I would think some of the ghostly apparition ones would work best. Just have something staring at you out of the mirror for a bit and then fade away.

I just wanted to chime in and say this post also helped me get started. Thank you for the general setup points.

The last issue I had was that when the mirror was doing its thing and displaying content to the monitor, I couldn’t use a browser from my development machine to see the output. And SSH into the Pi wasn’t allowing me to start the mirror service. The browser and Pi just weren’t communicating.

My solution was to run node serveronly. This allows me to hit the mirror’s ip address and for my browser to render the mirror content. A quick reboot of the mirror will pop it back into display mode.

@shavesophere Thank you. This at least got me to the point where I can show the display on a monitor. Now I just have to walk to the other room to see my changes. :/

@RHeniz How was your support box constructed? Perhaps some ventilation slits in the top & bottom to let hot air escape. Did you seal the back of the box with plywood or just push it up against the wall?

If you really wanted to be paranoid about it, you could add a small computer case fan to the top of your box and power it off the Pi. If you really wanted to be high speed/low drag about it, you could write a module to display fan RPM and case temperature on the mirror. :)

I picked up a heavy duty mirror mount from Home Depot for attaching everything to the wall. It’s rated for 100 lbs., which should be more than enough. A quick google search for “French cleat” should give you plenty of options.

I’m building this mirror as a gift and unlike most of the examples online, it needs to look… well, frilly. Otherwise it won’t go with the rest of the decor. I picked up a backless frame from a hobby store. There’s a groove for the glass, but nothing immediately obvious for the monitor (which is significantly smaller than the glass).

I’ll let you know what I come up with. I suspect the others here have the right of it: support the monitor and use something clever to hang the glass & frame off the monitor.