This has been a really fun project! I saw the first version a while back and wanted to make one. Christmas is coming up, so this is my girlfriend’s present!

I found the frame in a thrift store for $20. Seeing the frame made me jump on the project. That thing is incredible…plastic…but incredible…

For the glass, I look around a lot and compared pictures and whatnot and decided to go with actual smart mirror glass from Two Way Mirrors. I’m really happy with the reflection/allowance ratio. It looks great! That being said, the glass was the most expensive part of the project.

I sourced a 32" TV from a pawn shop. Well, two of them. Ever opened up an LED TV? Yeah…maybe don’t. The first one became a great set of LED strips and some sweet thin speakers for another project. Second one I pulled off everything I could while keeping the housing intact, and it made it to the finish line.

I lucked out with the frame having preexisting holes that the old glass was mounted with. I created a set of rails to use the holes, then built a wall on those rails to secure a backing to.

The light wood shows through the glass, as well as the TV logo and vol/ch button text, so I ended up painting the front of the wood black and masking the logo/text with electrical tape.

I added fans into the side of the backing I made to get airflow into the TV. They are kind of noisy, so I might flip them out with silent ones before I give it to her.

This thing is a beast and hard to carry around, so I installed some handles for the top and bottom of the frame. That worked really well!

Here is everything inside. I opted for a RPi case with a fan because it will be locked in there. I haven’t seen issues with temperature yet, but I haven’t had it running for extended periods yet. I ran power connectors for the fans through a protoboard, but I’m sure that could have been tidied up a bit with direct wiring.

I put a PIR sensor at the base of the frame. The TV I have in currently doesn’t support sleep mode, so I’m still working through how that will actually function when the dust settles.

Here it is closed up from the back. I drilled holes for the existing TV mounts. I think that will be the way to hang this. I thought about a French cleat too, but not sure yet. Also kicking around the idea of building an easel for it!

Here it is turned on! The only visible module you can’t see is an iframe in the middle of the screen that points to a page on my personal website. That way I can push randomness to it remotely, which is either creepy or fun.

Current Modules:

• Time/date
• Google Calendar
• MMM-forecast-io
• Compliments
• News Feed
• WatchDog
• MMM-Remote-Control
• MMM-PIR-Sensor (will probably pull due to the previously referenced issues)

FWIW, a ferrite bead is a working solution, but I was able to circumvent this issue by keeping the PIR Sensor a good distance from the Pi. Mine is about 3 feet away from the Pi and doesn’t act erratically as it did when it was right next to it during testing.

https://github.com/phrazelle/mm-pir-hide-all

This is a modification of the MM-Hide-All module (https://github.com/masters1222/mm-hide-all) by masters1222. It requires the MMM-PIR-Sensor module (https://github.com/paviro/MMM-PIR-Sensor) by paviro to be installed as well, as the hiding/unhiding is triggered by the “USER_PRESENCE” notification sent.

This was created by Josh Mclaughlin to circumvent an issue with the MMM-PIR-Sensor module where a TV doesn’t have power saving settings and killing the HDMI signal from the RPi forces the TV to shut off automatically.

This essentially brings up a black box to cover the screen after a set amount of time that disappears upon a USER_PRESENCE notification from the MMM-PIR-Sensor module.

@fox That is the standard News Feed module. The larger font is the RSS feed title, and the smaller font is the description.

@fox That is the standard News Feed module. The larger font is the RSS feed title, and the smaller font is the description.

I also implemented the maxNewsItems solution.

It keeps really old content from sticking around (I was seeing feeds from over a month old) but it favors one of the three feeds I have added in now, only displaying items from that feed and ignoring the rest.

It would be cool to see an update where it pulls one item from every feed added before adding a second item from the same feed.

i.e. Feeds 1, 2 & 3 - pulls one from feed 1, then one from feed 2, then one from feed 3, then another from feed 1, another from feed 2, etc.

FWIW, a ferrite bead is a working solution, but I was able to circumvent this issue by keeping the PIR Sensor a good distance from the Pi. Mine is about 3 feet away from the Pi and doesn’t act erratically as it did when it was right next to it during testing.

I have an issue where topics from an RSS feed well over a month old are still populating. Is there a way to have it reject items that are XX days old?

Agreed, I think altering the delay on the sensor would fix the issue.

That being said, the microwave radar sensor sounds awesome! I’d like to see it in action as well.

@bibi Yes! Here is the post I submitted around the new module. Remember that you still need the MMM-PIR-Sensor module by paviro installed for this to work.

Thanks for the kudos!

Here is an updated module that fixed the referenced PIR Sensor issue:
https://github.com/phrazelle/mm-pir-hide-all

https://github.com/phrazelle/mm-pir-hide-all

This is a modification of the MM-Hide-All module (https://github.com/masters1222/mm-hide-all) by masters1222. It requires the MMM-PIR-Sensor module (https://github.com/paviro/MMM-PIR-Sensor) by paviro to be installed as well, as the hiding/unhiding is triggered by the “USER_PRESENCE” notification sent.

This was created by Josh Mclaughlin to circumvent an issue with the MMM-PIR-Sensor module where a TV doesn’t have power saving settings and killing the HDMI signal from the RPi forces the TV to shut off automatically.

This essentially brings up a black box to cover the screen after a set amount of time that disappears upon a USER_PRESENCE notification from the MMM-PIR-Sensor module.

Ok, I asked a friend write some code to make this work and he did a great job!

Here is a link to the forked GitHub repo. I will add it to the Showcase section as well.

I have an issue running the MM-PIR-Sensor module by paviro. My tv doesn’t have power saving settings, so when the HDMI signal is killed it shows a “No Signal” message, then turns the tv off.

I like the functionality of the mm-hide-all module by masters1222, but I would like to use that with the PIR sensor instead of a physical button press.

This seems like a simple mashup of the two modules in my head, but I’m not versed enough in JS to make that a reality.

Would someone be interested in combining the two modules so that the mm-hide-all module works as-is, but with the PIR Sensor state making the change instead of a physical button press?