I finally received my heat sinks and had the time to play with my second Pi (3b+, not my mirror-Pi, which is just a 3b).

The heat sink is fixed to the CPU via heat conducting double-sided adhesive. It’s a small surface but it holds well. The 30mm 12V fan is connected to the 5V and GND of the Pi. That’s enough to get it running and it’s totally silent. The airflow is enough to keep everything cool.

To fix the fan to the heat sink I just used some wood screws. Didn’t have any nicer looking ones…

Costs:

• list itemFan 1.17€ from Aliexpress
• list itemHeat sink: 1.16€ (for 5 pieces) from Aliexpress, You can also buy just once but I will use the others for other projects.
• list itemHeat conducting adhesive: 1.08€ for 48 pieces (25x25mm). You can buy less but I also use it for other projects…

You should check how much power your mirror, incl. screen and RaPi, consumes and buy an appropriate LED power supply. Especially the IP67 ones are very slim. My 60W power supply is only 33mm high. My whole system uses max. 30W so I decided to go bigger (46W was out of stock, 50W has the same dimensions). If you’re at max. below 30W you could aim for a 36W power supply that are even smaller (I think 20mm high).

You could use buck-boost-converters to adjust the voltage you need for the Pi or the LCD. In my case the LCD is driven by a V59 universal controller board that runs on 12V, so it can be powered directly from the supply. The Pi will get the power also from the power supply but with a buck-converter in-between, that reduces the 12V to 5V.

Of course it runs on a Pi. Even a Pi0. You can either directly use OpenElec, an SD card image that runs Kodi directly, or install it via sudo apt-get install kodi. It’s a general mediaplayer that can also display pictures and shuffle through them. Though, I don’t know how to set it up to load the pictures automatically after booting. That’s what you’ll have to find out.

Thanks MichMich. That’s useful info.

You could buy a universal LCD controller board like the V56. Buy the longest LVDS cable you can find. The board itself, w/o LED driver cost around 7.50€-8.00€ incl. shipping. The cheapest LVDS cable I found was 0.88€ incl. shipping. Usually they are around 20cm but you could also make a longer one yourself. A universal LED driver should be less than a euro, too.
You could then lead the cables to the inside of the cabinet (via the hinges probably). and hide the electronic boards in a hidden double floor board (if you know what I mean). Like a box inside, or on top of the mirror. Just make sure you allow air flow for cooling.

@j.e.f.f said in MMM-PIR-Sensor:

@codyS75 The way I set up mine was I removed the dome over the sensor, and drilled a small (2-3mm) hole in the frame. The sensor is mounted behind the hole and can only “see” directly forward. This works really well, since you only want the PIR sensor to be triggered when someone is standing right in front of the mirror. And the you don’t have to see the ugly dome either!

I did the same. I drilled a 3mm hole through the frame and on the inside half way through a 8mm hole which holds the PIR sensor. Works incredibly well. A radar sensor CAN be a better solution, but keep in mind it works 360° and also through thin walls. It didn’t work well for me. Got too many unwanted triggers. A metal enclosure could have solved the problem but the PIR was the easier way to go.

It looks like you made changes to your compliments.js. Did you add compliments to the module? It’s generally better to add them to the config.js instead.
I’d suggest to move your new compliments over to the config.js, undo the changes in the compliments.js and then run the update.

Thanks, it’s a start. Google didn’t give me anything useful.

@codyS75 Yes. The 8mm hole perfectly fits the sensor. Drill the 3mm hole first. This way you can use it as the center point to drill the 8mm hole.

Not sure since I don’t use the node serveronlyin my setup but a simple ctrl+cmight do the trick. Or you use pm2. Make a short script with nano mm_so.shand paste the following (make sure your MagicMirror directory is correct)

cd ~/MagicMirror
node serveronly

ctrl+xfollowed by a confirmation with ywill save it. Then type chmod a+x mm_so.sh.
If you have pm2 installed you can then just run it by typing pm2 start mm_so.sh. You stop it again by just entering pm2 stop mm_so.

Disclaimer: I haven’t tried any of the above and it might contain errors or be simply wrong. Just give it a try. It doesn’t break anything.

Maybe try a MOSFET to get 3.3V. However, I am not very confident that would work. I don’t understand why it didn’t work when you combined the pins 28 and 30 with 2 and 3.
What happens when you only put 3.3V on pin 30, leaving 28 (VDD) disconnected? And what happens if you reverse it (28 = 3.3V, 30 = 0V)?

Maybe somebody else with more experiences with LCDs could join the conversation?

@Daiki Do you have an extra LED driver for LCDs? You could take the connections from there. Kinda like in this picture:

I am not really sure how correct I am but it looks to me that those pins are for the LED backlight of the LCD panel. As far as I can see the LCD controller board doesn’t have an in-build LED driver. VDD and V(LED_EN) are both 3.3V. Maybe combine those pins with pin 2 and 3 and see what happens.

Of course there is always a risk of frying your panel so I am not taking any responsibility! It’s just a suggestion of what you could try to do. Please report once you got it to work.

This is incredibly impressive!

Do you have the LVDS cable? A 6bit-1CH LVDS has different pin population that for instance a 8bit-2CH. Vcc and GND are at different locations and a wrong cable could potentially fry your LCD.

I am on my phone without my glasses, so I can’t see very well but on the imgur picture it looks like a 8bit-2CH cable while a 1366 resolution seems more like 6bit-1CH (just a guess from my little experience with LCD panels, don’t take it as a fact).

Have you tried to hook it back up to the old laptop to see if it’s still working?

Also, have you flashed the right firmware for the controller board?

@sw76 I am sorry, I couldn’t find a datasheet for that screen. It’s generally tough to find datasheets for TV displays. Had the same problem when I build my mirror. In the end I found a free broken computer screen with a working LCD panel. Maybe that’s a better option for you.

Also, I assume the blue tint is a problem with the panel itself and not a problem with the controller board. Maybe it’s just the cable, though. Check both end for continuity.

Good luck with your project!

You can find universal LCD controller boards for cheap on eBay or AliExpress. Try to find the datasheet and if the LCD has a LVDS interface I’ll help finding the best controller board. A quick Google search didn’t show anything useful. Maybe post pictures of the LCD panel with all labels visible.

@aimorris Not sure I can help. I am not really good analyzing logs but I could see this

ssh_askpass: exec(/usr/bin/ssh-askpass): No such file or directory
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists

Are you trying to start MM remotely? Does MM require root (sudo)? If you start it remotely, have you tried to start it locally?

Hi there,
what you want is a display with high contrast. I think VA panels have the best. At least on paper.

To power my mirror I use a 12V power supply for the LCD and a buck converter to reduce the 12V to 5V for my RasPi. That’s a dirt cheap solution which is working really well for more than 2 years.
There are also really, really cheap universal LCD controller boards that run on 5V only (around 4-5€, up to FullHD resolution, 30 pin LVDS, 2-CH, 8-bit) You configure them via jumpers. Although they have only a VGA output. Which means you’ll need an additional VGA to HDMI adapter (usually less than 3€). T

And of course: In bright conditions you should pick a mirror with a higher transmission rate. In darker conditions a lower transmission rate will do. What mirror have you got?

I use the cheapest SSD I could get for my Pi at that time. It’s running non-stop for 2 years without any issues. You can get 120GB SSD’s for less than 20€. A SATA-USB adapter costs around 2€ from China. Maybe that’s an option for you.
SD cards are not designed to be permanently written to. They wear out too fast.