I have it incorporated in the frame. I drilled a 2 or 3mm hole in the front of the frame and a 8mm hole from the back which only goes half way through. The 8mm are perfect to mount the PIR sensor without the lense. The mirror only activates when you are directly in front of it and it’s hardly visible.

According to the datasheet my LCD panel weights 2530g. Thought it’s much lighter… my complete mirror with 6mm mirror glass weights slightly above 8kg. I think that’s not too much. The glass has probably the highest weight impact on the project. Thinner glass will reduce the weight drastically.
I am using only the naked LCD panel with an universal LCD controller board (check for V56 universal LCD controller board on ebay or aliexpress) and a 12V/50W LED power supply. All in a self-made wooden frame. It’s hanging stable on the wall for pretty much exactly one year now.

For the multi-screen part: It depends on multiple factors whether you can see them or not. First is the brightness of your LCDs. If it’s set too high you’ll have backlight bleeding (the black will not be fully dark anymore). Also it depends on the transmission values of your mirror glass and the light environment of the room. It’s best to find a location with constant light conditions. My Mirrorpane Chrome Spy has a transmission of 8%. I’d say that’s lower limit. If I could find one, I’d go for 15% or maybe even 20%.

In the first picture what does the multi-meter show when you measure black (should be ground) against the red wires on the on the right hand connector? Can you also tell me the what LCD panel it is exactly? best to make pictures of the stickers in the back. I’d look for the datasheet to see whether or not it is running on 5V. If so there should be a 5V rail you could harvest. Otherwise I’d think there would be at least a 12V rail somewhere. You could use that with a buck converter to get down to 5V for the Pi.

I got a broken 24" LCD monitor for free. The panel itself is working fine with a cheap universal LCD controller board.
I don’t know about your monitor but it shouldn’t be “extremely heavy”…

If you want to use more than one screen you’ll probably have to use a Raspberry Pi for every screen. Or you use a regular mini PC or laptop with dual monitor support.

I have a sensor that allows changing the sensitivity but for me the lowest was still to much as it got triggered when somebody walked by outside my house. I am using a PIR-Sensor now.

@bachoo786 The sensor should have three pins: VCC, GND and signal out. You connect them the same way you connect a PIR sensor and it should also work with the same MM module MMM-PIR-Sensor.

I was just about to post the exact same as @lavolp3. That should work for sure.

Google calendar? In your Google account you should find somewhere a calender link in this format https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/.../private-...../basic.icsthat works for sure. I am using it on my mirror. Nextcloud/Owncloud also works if you want to run your calendar locally.

@pnizet Still quite pricey for my taste but I’d love to see a infor-board project based on it. So go ahead and don’t forget to present it here :smiling_face_with_open_mouth:

Btw, it’s not my topic. @Gooral was the one starting this thread. :slightly_smiling_face:

A mirror with a higher transmission should also reduce the backlight bleeding since you won’t have to increase the brightness as much, creating a better black and therefore having better contrast.

@yep_dd You could use relay with a small delay to power your backlight. So the screen will only be visible after the “HDMI1” box disappeared. Personally I wouldn’t bother with it, though.

@adrien That should still be possible with the script method described in 5.1. Instead of the power lines for the controller board of the LCD you use the cables that lead to your backlight.

I don’t know what LCD you have. Some have an extra inverter or LED driver board. You can take the cables from there. Some have a 40 pin LVDS cable (instead of 30 pin), so you have to check the datasheet which wires are for the backlight. I’d take the VCC wire for the backlight, snip it and connect both lose ends to the relay. That should work.

Keep in mind that with this method the LCD is always on, only the backlight is off.

@adrien check out this forum thread. cruunnerr explains different methods on how to turn on/off your screen. He helped me setting up my system which uses a relay and PIR-sensor to power on/off my LCD. I think that’s what you’re looking for.

@striiker Could it be the screensaver? Have you tried updating to 2.5.0 or downgrading to 2.3.x? I am pretty sure I didn’t have the problem with 2.3. In my case it’s enough to reload the MM only once a day. Also I had noticed that my Pi was reeeeeeeaaaaaaallllllyyyyyyy slow when connecting via shh after the screen blanked. Slow to the point I thought it crashed. Pretty sure it was a memory leak or so.

I haven’t updated to 2.5 yet as I want to wait and see what problems other users experience :face_with_stuck-out_tongue_winking_eye:

Never got it to display anything. Page could not load or something like that. Not on the Pi0 and also not remotely on another PC. After many attemps and long hours of troubleshooting and reading I finally gave up on it.

I really would love to get it working though as I’d like to make another cheap mirror for my brother as a present. Still have a two-way-mirror lying around…

Why are you running the update command with sudo?
Does your mirror work but it blanks the screen after some hours or is it always black?

@graham-rich to update your MM installation you have to enter your MM directory and run git pull && npm install. Looks like you tried to update npm instead.

@striiker 0 6 * * * pm2 reload mm
It reloads my mm.sh script every day at 6am. Working perfectly fine for quite some time now.

@teitlebot Of course. Just wanted to show a possible “cheapest” way. It always depends on your budget and skills/age of your students.

No need to go for the LCD controller board path if you get working screens.

I think you have to be lucky to get an old eeePC for just $11. Let alone multiple of those. Have a look into RasPi alternatives like Orange Pi. They are a bit cheaper and I think there’s a forum thread here somewhere of people running MM on it. The Pi0 would be probably the cheapest alternative but I’ve never managed to run MM on it…

Of course a cheap laptop is the easiest way to go if you can get enough for cheap. An old laptop for $25 is still cheaper than a RasPi and already comes with power supply and screen.

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!