Best posts made by MadScientist

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…

I use a 12V power supply for the LCD screen. From the 12V power supply I have a step-down module which takes the 12V and puts 5V out for the Raspberry Pi. It runs perfectly fine for almost 5 years now.

@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.

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.

Thanks MichMich. That’s useful info.

@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.

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.

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.

That’s a very nice build. For the camera you should check out the PS3 camera. It also comes with microphones is dirt cheap. I bought one for 4€ (incl. shipping) on ebay. Don’t have it yet, though. I can imagine that it will look much neater on your mirror and the microphones (afaik 4 of them) are supposed to be of good quality.

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