I’ve been working on my MM for a few months now and have had a lot of time to think over my decisions along the way and what I’ve determined is that choosing the monitor is perhaps the most important step so this is a great question. Based on what you want out of your mirror and how much you are willing to spend, the monitor you choose can determine a lot about how you approach it and what options you have.

First and foremost, I think most people would agree that a computer monitor is better than a TV for this unless you want to go really big for the display. Monitors display text much better than TV screens and since a magic mirror is predominantly text on display, then it will always look better on a computer monitor.

So the first thing I think you should decide is whether the display will fill the entire space behind the mirror or just a portion. If you decide to have it fill the space, the mirror and frame will absolutely need to be custom sized to fit around the dimensions of the monitor so they’re all about the same dimensions. If you want it to partially fill the screen then you can get any frame/mirror that work together and place the monitor wherever you want. This second option will generally be less expensive, especially if you don’t have the means to create your own frame and want to pick up one with a deep enough rabbet to fit all of the components.

I personally went all out on mine when it came to the frame and mirror glass (custom frame from a local shop and cut two-way smart mirror from twowaymirrors.com - they cut it to the exact size I wanted, I highly recommend them) so I wanted to spend as little as possible on the monitor. I managed to find a decent 1920x1080, 21" TN monitor for $60 new with built in speakers - the speakers are only 2.5w so nothing special but they’re very low profile, easy to incorporate into the mirror and already have the connection to the monitors power board which means I wouldn’t need an external power source for them. It’s probably the easiest way to get sound on your mirror aside from plugging in an external speaker but then it’s not as clean as you’ll have a wire running from your mirror to the speaker. If you don’t need sound then you can probably get a monitor like that for even less than that but keep in mind, in this price range, any monitor you get will likely have a DVI input and not HDMI so you’ll need to buy an additional DVI-to-HDMI cable or adapter. Still, the same monitor I got with HDMI was $40 more so grabbing a $10 cable was well worth it, plus I could buy whatever length of cable I wanted (rather than being stuck using the included one which could be as long as 6-feet and take up more room inside the mirror).

As @BKeyport mentioned, the ports should face towards the bottom of the screen not out the back as this would require you do have a much thicker frame to contain the cables. One other thing I did was to find the lowest profile power strip with USB that I could so I can plug everything into that and have a single cable running from the mirror to the wall. This is the power strip I ended up using. It’s 1.625" wide so it’ll fit into most builds and gives you two grounded power outlets and two USB ports for whatever you decide to include. As of now, I’m only using one of each for the monitor and RPi but if I add LED’s at any point, I’ll have the option to use either of the other two for that and still have an additional option to expand features in the future.

Sorry, I know I sort of went off the handle with my response but hopefully you found some more useful info in there! In summary, don’t worry about the specs of the monitor as much as you would if you were using it for a computer. Any monitor will display text better than a TV and other features such as size, depth, etc. are more important for the MM build, in my opinion. The one exception may be brightness/contrast if your two-way mirror is on the darker side and want the display to be vivid.

I’ve been working on my MM for a few months now and have had a lot of time to think over my decisions along the way and what I’ve determined is that choosing the monitor is perhaps the most important step so this is a great question. Based on what you want out of your mirror and how much you are willing to spend, the monitor you choose can determine a lot about how you approach it and what options you have.

First and foremost, I think most people would agree that a computer monitor is better than a TV for this unless you want to go really big for the display. Monitors display text much better than TV screens and since a magic mirror is predominantly text on display, then it will always look better on a computer monitor.

So the first thing I think you should decide is whether the display will fill the entire space behind the mirror or just a portion. If you decide to have it fill the space, the mirror and frame will absolutely need to be custom sized to fit around the dimensions of the monitor so they’re all about the same dimensions. If you want it to partially fill the screen then you can get any frame/mirror that work together and place the monitor wherever you want. This second option will generally be less expensive, especially if you don’t have the means to create your own frame and want to pick up one with a deep enough rabbet to fit all of the components.

I personally went all out on mine when it came to the frame and mirror glass (custom frame from a local shop and cut two-way smart mirror from twowaymirrors.com - they cut it to the exact size I wanted, I highly recommend them) so I wanted to spend as little as possible on the monitor. I managed to find a decent 1920x1080, 21" TN monitor for $60 new with built in speakers - the speakers are only 2.5w so nothing special but they’re very low profile, easy to incorporate into the mirror and already have the connection to the monitors power board which means I wouldn’t need an external power source for them. It’s probably the easiest way to get sound on your mirror aside from plugging in an external speaker but then it’s not as clean as you’ll have a wire running from your mirror to the speaker. If you don’t need sound then you can probably get a monitor like that for even less than that but keep in mind, in this price range, any monitor you get will likely have a DVI input and not HDMI so you’ll need to buy an additional DVI-to-HDMI cable or adapter. Still, the same monitor I got with HDMI was $40 more so grabbing a $10 cable was well worth it, plus I could buy whatever length of cable I wanted (rather than being stuck using the included one which could be as long as 6-feet and take up more room inside the mirror).

As @BKeyport mentioned, the ports should face towards the bottom of the screen not out the back as this would require you do have a much thicker frame to contain the cables. One other thing I did was to find the lowest profile power strip with USB that I could so I can plug everything into that and have a single cable running from the mirror to the wall. This is the power strip I ended up using. It’s 1.625" wide so it’ll fit into most builds and gives you two grounded power outlets and two USB ports for whatever you decide to include. As of now, I’m only using one of each for the monitor and RPi but if I add LED’s at any point, I’ll have the option to use either of the other two for that and still have an additional option to expand features in the future.

Sorry, I know I sort of went off the handle with my response but hopefully you found some more useful info in there! In summary, don’t worry about the specs of the monitor as much as you would if you were using it for a computer. Any monitor will display text better than a TV and other features such as size, depth, etc. are more important for the MM build, in my opinion. The one exception may be brightness/contrast if your two-way mirror is on the darker side and want the display to be vivid.

@sdetweil I may have to look into that. For now I’ll have to settle since I’m on a time crunch to finish the mirror by the 18th because it just wouldn’t be the same without the mirror starting up with a ‘happy birthday’ message in the compliments module on her actual birthday. Part of the gift (that keeps on giving) is that I’ll have all the time in the world to add to the mirror down the road.

@sdetweil I’ve made multiple attempts to incorporate the Google API (both with voice rec and photos) but it seems they made a number of changes to the way things work earlier this year so all of the existing tutorials from as recent as late 2019 are harder to follow and I haven’t been able to sort it out with my limited knowledge (and my limited I mean I have never attempted anything using the API before so I am guessing half the time). I would prefer Google Assistant but I’ll settle for module control with some delay as I don’t think my girlfriend who I’m building this for will use it for much aside from switching between preset pages and I can customize it to her liking so she doesn’t need to interact with it much. She’ll definitely get a kick out of calling it JARVIS though! I’m not going to lie, I probably would have been better off just getting a Chromecast so she can put whatever she wants up on it from her phone (and the ‘screensaver’ for the 'cast has time and weather) but I wanted to be able to customize all the colors, layout, etc so I went with the Pi and MM2. It’s decision I’m only half regretting…

@Mykle1 It’s not great. What’s more is it varies from reboot to reboot of the Pi. Sometimes it seems to take a second at most, other times it takes the amount of time it takes me to feel the need to give the command again, about 3 or 4 seconds. Not sure why the discrepancy but if I can boot it to work on the faster end at any point then I’m fine with it since it’ll just be left on the wall at that point. Would be nice to figure out why it goes slower sometimes and faster others though. Unfortunately, there is limited documentation for the hat I’m using. I originally got it because it has a GPIO through port that’s Grove compatible and I picked up a Grove PIR sensor but I’m struggling to get that to work and there is no documentation on using these components together so as with everything else in this build, I’m just guessing half the time.

@Mykle1 Fair enough! Out of curiosity, if I were to remove all the commands that I know I won’t use, would that improve the performance by limiting the number of possible commands or is the bulk of the delay just a result of the Pi’s limited processing power? For my mic, I’ve actually been using the Respeaker 2-mic Pi Hat. Not sure how much more responsive that is than a USB mic but it definitely picks up my voice better than the $6 USB mic most people get on Amazon. With a breakout ribbon cable I can place it anywhere I want up to a foot or so from the Pi itself so it doesn’t have to seat directly on top!

@Mykle1 Okay, got it to work! Although it seems when I say “cheer me up” it will 25% of the time pull up the help menu haha. Is there a function that pulls up help if it can’t ‘understand’ the input? I can’t imagine it’s reading my voice command as “show help”!

@Mykle1 said in Creating Custom Voice Commands for Hello-Lucy...?:

@Doctor0ctoroc said in Creating Custom Voice Commands for Hello-Lucy...?:

when I changed “Hello Lucy” to “Hey Jarvis” in the Hello-Lucy.js

You would only need to change it in the config entry

Ah, good to know so I’m not being redundant. And thanks for the direction on the coding, that helps a lot! Do I need to add the extra words to the words.json file as well?

@sdetweil Ah, that’s fantastic. That would explain why when I changed “Hello Lucy” to “Hey Jarvis” in the Hello-Lucy.js and config file, it was added to the .dic and .lm file…I thought it was included in there from the get go (assuming the code was written to include an alternative, ‘familiar’ AI name that users might want) but all this time, it was my change of the code that put it in there - and it totally works when I say “Hey Jarvis” instead of “Hello Lucy”!

So there’s no need to even edit the .lm or .dic files directly then?

@sdetweil So are the .lm and .dic files generated in real time? Like, does whatever is added to the words.json and sentences.json files propagate into the .lm and .dic files or are you saying that both the words and sentences files are the basis for generating the .lm and .dic files through the sphinx tool?

@sdetweil said in Creating Custom Voice Commands for Hello-Lucy...?:

@Doctor0ctoroc yep, you got it

Yes! So now that I got a handle on that, I need to figure out how the .js and .json files utilize the local sphinx library.

@Mykle1 - can you lend a hand here? From the looks of it, I believe that the words.json and sentences.json files contain a reference list of all of the words and phrases used in the checkCommands.json file, and they’re referenced by the node_helper.js and Hello-Lucy.js files to implement the hide/show commands, yes? Something like that? A basic hierarchy should suffice to point me int he right direction.

@sdetweil Okay cool - so it does seem like the tool generates pronunciations (strings of phonetic symbols) based on a dictionary of actual words but can also create pronunciations for new words (like proper names, eg Jarvis) so long as they are not too complicated (or over 35 characters) - however, it seems that it is less reliable to create pronunciations based on uncommon words than it is to create pronunciations for existing words. And the tool is also used to create complete sets of words to be referenced locally, if I’m not mistaken. This would mean that I can theoretically create a text file including all of the new words I want to add and upload it to both the lmtool and lextool, then I would add the output content to the .lm and .dic files included with Hello-Lucy. I think…

I may just create copies of all the related files in Hello-Lucy and do some experimenting with the option to revert back to the copied files.