Best posts made by MadScientist

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.

This is incredibly impressive!

I think that’s why the title says “… instead of the mirror”. I think it is supposed to be a kind of infoboard. I really like the idea but it will probably still takes ages before larger displays are available and affordable.

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.

That’s why I run mine from a cheap SSD (Kingston A400, 120GB iirc). Much faster and no risk of corrupting it. I paid 27€ for my SSD. At this price I think it is worth considering buying one.

I ordered cheap SMBJ5.0A diodes from Aliexpress for a couple of cents and now my Pi is as good as new. Not the best solder job but I don’t care.

Maybe I should see if that really worked by feeding it with 12V again? :clown_face:

Glad it worked! :smiling_face_with_open_mouth:

For the LCD you can ask at your local recycling center if they have a bunch of old monitors they’d be willing to donate to the school. Otherwise try places like Craigslist or so. You should find old 17" LCD screens for around 5 bucks. If they are not working, but the LCD panel looks ok, you can buy very cheap universal LCD controller boards like this.
The board runs on 5V so you also need a power supply. Try to find cheap 12V power supplies. Those to drive LEDs are generally very inexpensive. 25W should be enough per MagicMirror, but it greatly depends on the number and size of the CCFLs of the LCD. Use a 12V-to5V DC-DC buck converter. I have this one and I can also use it to power my RaspPi.
You’ll also need either an inverter or LED driver for the backlight. I am not linking a product here because it depends on the number of CCFL’s/LED strips but they should generally be less than 2 bucks a piece.

You’ll also need a HDMI to VGA adapter and if you don’t have a VGA cable, something like this.

That’s my input from the LCD side of the project. Let me know if you need help or have any questions. I only posted AliExpress links but you can check any other places of course. Check out eBay, Banggood.com, Gearbest and so on. Make sure you do some searching to always get the best price! Especially if it has to be as cheap as possible.

Edit: fixed mainly typos.

@Preve Hi there!
The Other day I installed MM on the latest Linux Mint and it worked without any issues. All I did before the npm installwas to run curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash - which was poested by @Mykle1 poested in this post. There were no errors during the installation. Give it a try and report back if that worked for you. :slightly_smiling_face:

I just felt like setting something up and take a picture to visualize the whole thing better.

For my actual mirror I use a V59 controller board which is great but it costs more. The board I linked above can control a large number of screens that run on either 3.3V or 5V. It can’t handle 12V panels, though. AFAIK 12V panels are mainly used in larger screens like TVs. Regular computer screens should use 5V. Anyway, always look for the data sheets before connecting the board to the LCD.

The LED driver for the LCD backlight generally needs 9-30V input. Since the LCD controller board only provides 5V I am drawing 12V directly from the power supply.

Somehow can’t add pictures so just click here!