Allright, I’ll give this a go. I wonder if part of the problem is the acrylic flexing. …I’ll probably try it this weekend. I’ll post pictures.
Read the statement by Michael Teeuw here.
Posts made by boblazer
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RE: I'm so bad at applying the reflective film! Any advice?
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RE: Do you use a PIR sensor? How do you hide it?
@sdetweil said in Do you use a PIR sensor? How do you hide it?:
maybe you only need 2mm of that to make the sensor work…
Yeah, that’s my understanding. I can’t find the post but it was here on this site. A guy did some experiments to find the smallest size hole his PIR sensor actually required. He tried 1mm, 2mm and 4mm(?). He said it worked just fine with a 2mm hole.
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Do you use a PIR sensor? How do you hide it?
I’ve read that a PIR sensor can work out of a 2mm hole. So if you just drill out a cavity for the sensor to sit in and then drill a 2mm hole out the front of the frame that would work.
Except there is that small problem (pun not intended) of the 2mm hole in the middle of your frame. I guess it would look a lot like the holes you see at the top of some laptop monitors. Then if you stain the wood with a dark color the hole might not be too noticeable.
But I’ve also heard people talking about putting a pinhole camera or (I think it was) a radar module “behind the glass”. How on earth do you do that? I mean, the monitor is behind the glass so unless you leave a sizable gap between the acrylic and the monitor there’s no way anything will fit back there.
Sadly, the pinhole option seems like the best to me. But do you know of any better way to do it?
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I'm so bad at applying the reflective film! Any advice?
Hi, so I’ve tried applying the film to acrylic probably ten times now. There are always air bubbles. I always scratch the acrylic with excessive squeegee use. I’m also seeing a rainbow discoloration after I apply the film (I think this is from spraying on too much Gila application solution).
I’ve used thin and thick acrylic. Right now I’m actually thinking the thin, highly flexible acrylic is the better option even though it distorts the reflection easily. I think I am just going to glue it to the monitor and that will provide all the rigidity it needs. What do you think about that?
My real challenge though is just applying the film to any piece of acrylic. I’m horrible at it. I’ve gotten good enough that I can get it mostly flat on the acrylic before I start to squeegee. If I see any wrinkles or bubbles I’ll lift the film back up, straighten it out, and then lay it back down straight. That works pretty good. Then I trim the excess film with a ruler and exacto knife. Then I squeegee from the center to the right, stopping about an inch from the edge. Then I do the left. Finally I squeegee the edges. But every freaking time I get bubbles or crinkles. Can you share some tips on how to do this right?
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Any tricks for applying the reflective film?
I’ve made two serious attempts and both came out with bubbles.
I think the problem the first time was a couple specs of stray sawdust. So the second time I brought it inside and was super clean. The second one actually came out worse though. I think the second one came out worse either because I didn’t lay the film on straight enough or because I used a thinner sheet of acrylic that maybe was flexing as I was squeegeeing out the solution.
What I have the most trouble with is separating the film from its backing layer and getting it onto the acrylic. I always mess that up one way or another. …maybe there’s a way to create a special jig that will make that easy?
My basic process is:
- Spray the window (with the gila solution)
- Spray the film
- Separate the film (while spraying it)
- Do my best to get the film squarely onto the acrylic
- Use my fingers to flatten it out a little
- Squeegee it down a little better (starting from the center until close to the edge)
- Use a knife to trim the excess film off
- Get serious with the squeegee. I try to start from the center and move out towards the edges but by this time there are usually bubbles all over the place and the show is over anyhow.
How can I get a perfect application of the film? How thick of acrylic do you usually use? Do you do it with the acrylic parallel to the ground or do you hang it on a wall for this purpose? Any advice you have would be outstanding.
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RE: Where do you find LCD's that are larger than 7"?
That’s interesting. I had never heard of an LCD controller board before. I’ll keep that in mind in case I come across any free broken monitors. How heavy is yours? The monitor I’m using is an Acer X223 which weighs 6.4 pounds with all the trim. For some reason it feels much heavier than that. Plus I think the frame weighs a couple pounds. How much does your 24"er weigh? How far do you break yours down? I took the plastic case and the stand off. The rest looks pretty hairy but I imagine I don’t need all of it.
I’ve heard it’s not easy to setup multiple displays on a pi. But I don’t see using multiple pi’s to be too much of a problem. I could run MagicMirror on all them and use one of them to orchestrate the rest. That’d be uncharted territory for me but I think doable. What about how it would look to the end user though. Would they be able to see the individual LCDs or do you think it will be possible to blend them into the rest of the background so you can’t tell there are multiple displays?
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Where do you find LCD's that are larger than 7"?
The largest LCD screen that I can find that’s just sold as an LCD screen (e.g. not as part of a monitor or tablet) is this 7" $15 one by adafruit.*woops, that’s just the touch sensitive part.I have a few 24" monitors but they are extremely heavy. I realize you could probably use the screen from a larger laptop if you were motivated enough. You could also use a tablet for the 7"-13" space but there’s a lot of overhead there (using a whole tablet when you just need the screen). Finally, I realize you can get a lot of this off craigslist if you just want to get it done and are willing to overlook the problems I just mentioned (e.g. okay, it’s extremely heavy but whatever).
I’m not looking for any particular size range. I just want to know what options are available in each size range.
One other side question. Has anyone tried splitting up the interface into multiple displays? Instead of using a giant 42" TV to display the time and a status message maybe you could use a few ~7" displays as second and third monitors and display it that way. I’m not sure how you would blend each lcd screen into the surrounding background of the mirror though.