We usually use a family photo wall calendar every year to display birthdays and appointments. In December, I stumbled across the MagicMirror project and was totally thrilled from the start. Since I like to do small craft projects during the cold season anyway, this came in very handy. I still had an old 24-inch monitor and a Raspi in the attic. So I quickly took apart the monitor’s casing and ended up with a 24-inch display. In the garage, I found some leftover white baseboards, which I used as a frame.
I attached all the technology to the back of the display so that only one cable (power) is visible.
To ensure that the screen is not on all the time, I built a motion detector from an esp8266, which ensures that the screen turns on when movement is detected and turns off again when no movement is detected for 10 minutes.