Intro
I’ve been messing around with the MagicMirror concept for about 6 months and had previously set up a single monitor on a wall in the living room as a proof of concept. My wife and I liked the idea of an intelligent display, and had seen some excellent examples of Mirrors on here, but there was little to no chance of me being able to build any of them. I’m what you might call more a technology geek than a DIY expert :)

So the monitor just sat there on the wall until about a year ago when my wife and I decided to have some renovation work done. The layout of our open plan apartment meant there was some “dead” space off the dining room area which we figured we could turn into a reasonable sized storage area / utility room without making the dining area too small. We’d contracted a builder to do the work for us (not a DIY person, remember!) and that was when we discussed the Magic Mirror idea. As the builder was going to have to put up a new wall for us, why not get them to create a space in the wall and have the mirror built into the wall itself ? Access to the back of the mirror could be from inside the new utility room but from the outside it would look like a mirror sitting flush with the dining room wall.

Given this was going to be something that would be embedded in the wall, and I couldn’t just change it at will, I decided to buy most of the equipment I needed as “new”. At that point I then had free reign to shop around for the ideal size monitor and glass. Once I’d established the size of the mirror I wanted, by diligently checking monitor sizes, I realised could get 2 x 24" monitors into a frame, and it not look out of place.

The builder and I discussed various mounting options, and eventually decided on a very unusual approach. Instead of putting the glass in the frame, we decided to sandwich the glass between the plasterboard and the stud wall, then mount the frame housing all the components partly inside the partition wall. Whilst that meant the construction would be slightly more difficult, it would mean an ultra-minimalist look from the mirror side.

Because the glass and frame would already be on the wall, to avoid having to build anything in-situ, I constructed a lightweight chassis to hold the monitors together then mounted the Pi’s on the monitor VESA brackets. This kept the back relatively tidy and meant the actual install would only require lifting the completed “Magic” part of the mirror into the frame, levelling it up, and securing it in place.

Finally, because I’m using consumer grade monitors, I knew that having them on permanently would likely shorten their useful life, so I wanted a way to have the mirror turn on and off easily. Initially I’d thought about having some form of motion sensors, however PIR’s wouldn’t work due to the glass, and my testing of various Microwave sensors gave very mixed results. I eventually settled on using a smart plug (controllable by any mobile device), and coupled with an Amazon Echo Dot so it can be voice controlled as well.

Modules and layout

Modules used
Top screen
• 3 x MMM-MyCommute (One each for mine/my wife’s commute plus one additional for tram times from closest tram stop)
• 2 x MMM-UKNationalRail (for the two major rail stations near where we live)
• 2 x Default calendar (one for my wife, and one for me)
• 7 (and counting) MMM-Doomsday modules for countdowns to important dates

Bottom screen
• 1 x Default Clock module
• 7 x Default Weather module (for us, and the locations of all our family members)
• 1 x Default News feed module
• 1 x DailyXKCD
• 1 x MMM-Wunderlist
• 1 x Default calendar (for my mother’s diary, as she likes us to know what she’s up to :) )

Other random bits of info
VNC installed for remote access
Bind IP to MAC via router to ensure static IP’s for the Pi’s (makes using VNC much easier)
Echo Dot and Smart plug configured on a separate isolated wireless VLAN (because I’m paranoid :) )
Modified custom.css for colours and layout
Added Cron job to restart MM process at midnight in case of a module crash

Hardware Components
• 50/50 mirrored glass (6mm x 660mm x 860mm)
• “Reused” 600mm x 800mm Ikea kitchen cupboard and door (for internal frame)
• 2.4m x 15mm aluminium shower corner edging (for external frame)
• 2 x Raspberry Pi3’s with 16Gb Toshiba SD cards
• 2 x AOC 24” LED monitors
• 2 x 1ft Flat HDMI cables
• 2 x ‘VESA-Pi+’ cases to mount Pi’s to the monitor
• 2 x 13Amp sockets for power
• 1 x C5/C5 Y-cable (to power monitors)
• 1 x Anker 2 port 24W USB charger, with 3ft and 1ft USB cables (to power Pi’s)
• 1 x Meross MSS210 smart plug (to control Anker PSU)
• 1 x Amazon Echo Dot for voice control
• Sheet of A1 300gsm black card (for masking the mirror)
• Miscellaneous nuts, bolts, jumper wire, heatshrink, cable ties, a steel L-bracket, and the always essential Gorilla tape :D

Construction Pictures
The new stud wall being constructed

Plasterboarding going up

Plasterboard all on, time to cut out the hole for the mirror

The reused Ikea kitchen cupboard, cut down to form the frame

Glass sandwiched in the wall, frame on, waiting for the glue to dry

Minimalistic look from the front

AOC monitors before I took them apart

Frames removed, and waiting to have the custom chassis measured

The monitor masking laid out, with a fairly small amount of wasted space

Pi connected up, mounted on the new chassis in the VESA case (GPIO cable is where I was testing the PIR’s)

Anker plug for the Pi’s, Smart plug and Y cable for the monitors

Side mounts to hold the monitors in place

Base mounts for the monitors to rest on

Completed mirror from the back

All closed up and concealed from prying eyes.

remove the second instance of

var config = (
module : [

]
}

at the bottom of the file

@cowboysdude - Sounds like you’re trying to build a homebrew version of something like a Crestron system ?

Have you thought about using OpenHAB ? It would seem to fit what you’re trying to do, but it’s not an MM system, it’s designed more as a standalone solution.

The issue I’ve found with IoT devices is finding companies that will release the API to “non commercial” people (ie, if you’re a company, they’ll let you access the API, if a home user, no chance). I’ve had this with my heating system who’ve told me in no uncertain terms I can’t have access to the API for their product. Given I already queried the quantity of data they’re shipping back to their servers (in the name of providing a “seamless and responsive user experience”), I don’t think they want me having a peek inside their system.

This is exactly what it says it is, an issue with the power supply unit (PSU) to the Raspberry Pi. Either

1. It is not outputting enough power to the Pi OR
2. The Pi is drawing more power than expected and the PSU cannot provide the required Volts/Amps.

Depending on which version of the Pi, will determine how much power the Pi needs. Note: ALL Raspberry Pi’s should use a 5.1V PSU.

See this link for more info, and to tell you which PSU you require.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/power/README.md

If nothing has changed with your Pi (or PSU), try swapping out the PSU for another one with the appropriate specification.

Thank you Michael for all of the work you have put into this project over the years. I came across it courtesy of the MagPi article (which I’m sure is how many people first encountered the project). Since first reading about it, I’ve built more mirrors than I care to remember, both for personal use, and for friends/family as well.

As an aside, it also introduced me to Git, which has resulted in me finally learning to code (more than 3 decades after I skipped all those classes at University :)

Enjoy whatever your future holds, and thank you once again.

B

Just when I thought there were a standard set of colours, I find this…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_bin

Looks like the most sensible thing is to simply ensure the recycling symbol is on the icon, and then give people the option of different colours.

@DeanoNoire Our colours are blue (glass), grey (cardboard), green (plastic) and black (trash/rubbish), but I suspect if you compare local areas, they’ll all have different colour schemes. I’ve even seen places where the bins were all the same, they just had different logos on them for the relevant product.

As you say, either paramatize them, or even just reference the icons by name/type, and let people change the image behind them to their colour of choice ?

This is exactly what it says it is, an issue with the power supply unit (PSU) to the Raspberry Pi. Either

1. It is not outputting enough power to the Pi OR
2. The Pi is drawing more power than expected and the PSU cannot provide the required Volts/Amps.

Depending on which version of the Pi, will determine how much power the Pi needs. Note: ALL Raspberry Pi’s should use a 5.1V PSU.

See this link for more info, and to tell you which PSU you require.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/power/README.md

If nothing has changed with your Pi (or PSU), try swapping out the PSU for another one with the appropriate specification.

Hi, is there any way to add a option for a 4th icon ? We have 3 different types of recycling (glass, cardboard and plastic), as well as the usual rubbish/trash, and of course, they all come at different times ! :)

@tenpinmark Any chance you can post the code you used to fix it ? (or submit a fork to switch to instead)

@Glass92 I had similar problems (and only with this module). My solution was to create a cron job to reboot the mirror after midnight, which restarted the code. It’s not ideal, and actually introduces other issues with the HDMI port (will sometimes fail to initialise the display). I’ve since removed the cron job, and now just manually reboot if needed (usually once every couple of days)

Headers have been broken for a while now. Happened after MM version update. Not sure if @nwootton is still working on this or not though.

Also not been able to get multi-station working. The fix I used was just to have 2 modules listed one after each other (ie, duplicate the code in the config file, including API etc). That seems to work fine.

I seem to recall that the author no longer has a MagicMirror and so the module is not being updated. It broke for me at the last MM update, so it could very well be an issue with the base JS code.

There appears to be a bug in the OUI and IAB scripts for arp-scan. IEEE have changed the URL for both files (from the defaults listed)

They are now:

http://standards-oui.ieee.org/oui/oui.txt
http://standards-oui.ieee.org/iab/iab.txt

You can either edit the get-oui and get-iab perl scripts (which was my preference), or run the scripts with the above URL’s instead of the defaults.

Also, don’t forget to move the resulting TXT files to /usr/share/arp-scan (if you run the scan from anywhere other than that directory)

What is the error code for it ? If it’s 403, then check your login credentials.

Also what does “pm2 log” show from the command prompt ? That can give some indication of the issue.