First things first. It all started 2 years ago when I started building a smart home system based on Home Assistant. The next logical step for me was a smart bathroom mirror that would display my calendar, commute to work information, weather info and sensor info from my smart home.

I had all the needed hardware - 24"LCD, Raspberry Pi 3b+ and etc.

I wanted a frameless mirror as it looked more slick, modern and professional.

I decided to go with the mirror that Goldjunge_Chriz offered as it had a lot of positive reviews on the forum albeit being more expensive.

The setup is the following:

• 80x73 cm two-way mirror (I was the unlucky winner who got a broken mirror by the courier, but that’s another story. I managed to glue it just for the sake of testing. I found a mirror company here in Bulgaria that offers a better and cheaper alternative but I will share more details on that later)
• 24" LCD monitor
• WRGB LED strip behind the mirror, controlled by H801 Wi-Fi controller integrated with Home Assistant
• PS3 eye camera behind the mirror which is responsible for face recognition and voice commands
• External motion sensor turns on the mirror and switches it off after there is no motion detected (Home Assistant automation)
• The WRGB LED is controlled by Home Assistant

The frame:

• Built out of 50x50 mm Г-shaped aluminum profiles, welded together
• On the back of the mirror there is a non-transparent foil cut to the dimensions of the monitor
• The frame is glued to the mirror through the foil

Some pictures of the back of the mirror before it is installed:

Videos of the mirror in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eljzwpAeAdM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNTWafM9NF4

Considerations:

• The mirror is too dark … it is not suitable for rooms with no natural light. I will be testing another mirror at a later stage and will come back with the results, but this one is definitely not going to serve as a normal mirror in your bathroom.
• You have to stick something to the back of the mirror (e.g. non-transperant foil, wood panel or something else, otherwise you will be able to see through)
• If you can afford it (I can’t at the moment) go for an OLED monitor/TV - the LCD backlight is seen through the mirror and while it is not that bad I am perfectionist and it bothers me

@ChrizZz I followed the tutorial and installed OpenCV and all dependencies in a virtual environment, but that did not go very well afterwards, you have to reconfigure the module with the correct paths and that can be cumbersome, therefore I started on a clean state and installed OpenCV and the dependencies without a virtual envioronment - e.g. follow the same tutorial without the part related to virtual enviornment. That is the most appropriate for our use case.

@ChrizZz I have used camera motion detection and I gave it up, because:

1. It is not very reliable (maybe it was just my cheap camera that I used for testing back then)
2. it is resource hungry

Because of that I use an external wireless PIR sensor which is part of my smart home system to turn on/off my SmartMirror and it works great. Since the motion processing happens on my smart home system and the Mirror is turned on/off via SSH command it takes up no resources at all from the MagicMirror which is already at 60% load when using Facial Recognition.

@bkost I am using three different PSUs - A 5V 3A for the RPi, a separate 5V 30W for the LED strip and the original PSU for the display, but it all depends on your setup and the length of the LED strip. However, I would advise you to have separate PSUs as the LED strip draws quite a lot of current especially if all channels, including the white are used.

C’mon guys, we need 8 more people

After few days of installing (it takes a lot of time to build OpenCV 4.1 and dlib), trial and errors I finally installed and configured the module and oh boy is it good? Yes it is. It is much faster and accurate than Facial_Recognition_OCV3 that I used before. It was tottaly worth the time.

Thanks a lot to nischi for responding so quickly to the issues I posted on GitHub and to the enhansments he made based on my feedback.

Yeayyy, we need one more order C’mon guys!

@snille in the config.js:

Has anyone received their mirror? Mine arrived today but it is broken

I finally found out what the issue is. It was an electron bug that is fixed in MM v. 2.18 (I was using an older version). Now everything works.

@Goldjunge_Chriz said in New 2-way mirror supplier - lower prices and lead times:

But please do not forget to mention that you first ordered from me yourself

I have mentioned that in the first post, but deliberately haven’t mentioned your name, not to harm your reputation.

@Goldjunge_Chriz said in New 2-way mirror supplier - lower prices and lead times:

copied my complete shipping concept including the shipping box I developed brazenly

I haven’t copied anything, I improved on top of your concept and proposed to the people here fair shipping prices based on weight and destination and not flat shipping rate.

@Goldjunge_Chriz said in New 2-way mirror supplier - lower prices and lead times:

have made me bad several times here in this thread to promote your own mirror

I have only compared what I have, your and my mirror.

@Goldjunge_Chriz said in New 2-way mirror supplier - lower prices and lead times:

wanted to make my mirror bad by worse positioning, different angles and deliberate misleading

That is not true. Let me know at which angle you’d like me to put both mirrors at and I will do it. It was already confirmed by people who have your mirror and mine that mine is better. I would have never posted a video comparison if it was not requested by the users.

@Goldjunge_Chriz said in New 2-way mirror supplier - lower prices and lead times:

give you a “business advantage”

I donate all the money, ALL, not the profit, but ALL money to a child cancer fund and I can post here all the receipts for my donations, so I am not doing business here, I have a very well-paid job and do that as a courtesy to the community of fellow DIYers.

@Goldjunge_Chriz I think you posted in the wrong thread, mate. I never highjacked yours, so I would really appreciate if you do the same with mine. Thanks.

@ernade yeah, the prices have changed a ‘bit’

The mirror would be 90 EUR, shipping to Italy would be 40 EUR.

@Temneanu yes, but you won’t like the shipping cost. It is around 150-200 EUR.

@Maki definitely. To Austria, the shipping would be only 30 EUR

@Maki great. Sent a quote request. Will update you later about the price, but just FYI Switzerland is not a part of the EU and for some reason DPD does not offer any transportation options. UPS, however, does, at triple the price - just the shipping estimate would be around 180 EUR. Just letting you know before hand.

@Maki I will check with the supplier and will ping you over a PM, since they are in summer vacation until the middle of August. Do you have the frame with you to measure the inside mounting dimentions?

Update 13.07.2023: I have decided that all money that I make from these mirrors (not just the profit - ALL MONEY) will go to different donations. So far, I have donated to three different campaigns for children with cancer.

I would like to ask whoever purchased mirror from me to post some feedback whether positive or negative so that others who are still thinking about it can make the right decision.

The shipping company that I used to ship the mirrors got fully acquired by DPD and they changed their international shipping policy, now they won’t accept packages longer than 175 cm, therefore, the mirrors that I can ship cannot be over 165 cm due to the padding. I sent a 170 cm long mirror recently, however, I had to compromise the side padding, fortunately it arrived at the destination in one piece but it was a compromise that I don’t want to make anymore. I could use other companies, but their prices are x2 higher and I want to keep the cost to a minimum so more people can build their projects.

Update 24.04.2023:
I am updating the price since I haven’t done so in two years and the prices have soared, unfortunately. The new price is 449 euro/sq. m.