Hi guys,

I just wanted to share a Monitor I find pretty amazing to use with my magic mirror.

The BenQ GC2870 has 28" and 1920x1080. It is a VA Display and should have an amazing quality. I am only writing this because this display can be stripped down to the bezel it self and the controller board as well as power supply can be easily separated. In case some of you are looking for a nice monitor. I ordered it from amazon for just 160€.

Specs: https://www.benq.de/product/monitor/gc2870h/specifications/
Stripped down picture:

• the bezel has a depth of around 12mm and if you plan to use the casing for the power supply and control board it has a depth of 45mm

Tools used:

• Automotive Pry (Screwdriver flat should work)
  
• BenQ GC2870H

That is all you need.

To strip down:

• Take the monitor and start inserting the pry or screwdriver between the edges, it will pop open like this
  
• do this all around all edges, it is incredibly easy and takes at most 5 minutes
• take out the bezel
• remove the silver aluminum tape holding the power supply and control board
• unplug the LVDS connector
  
• unplug the backlight connector the circle shows VLED for the backlight
  
• The bezel used is a M280HKJ-L50. I found an innolux datasheet for the -L30 and according to this, these are the control lines for the backlight:
  
• unplug the connector for the buttons
  
• now the bezel should be completely separate
  
• beware not to touch where it says “DO NOT TOUCH” as the control lines for the bezel are attached to the screen:
  
• you can now remove the control board and, if you want the power supply beware: residue voltage might be in the capacitors, so dont touch soldering points. It might be wise to leave the power supply in and the paper protection attached
  (Source: innolux Panel_CHIMEI_INNOLUX_M280HKJ-L30_0_[DS].pdf)

git stash //stash your changes and save them
git pull //update to current version
git stash pop //merge your stash back

Solution for screensaver blanking:

add:

@xset s noblank 
@xset s off 
@xset -dpms

to:

/home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

Note: setting it in

 /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart or /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart 

did not work anymore, the user files take precedence.

I don’t know why it changed with the latest Raspbian Update or what I did wrong, but if I don’t add the xset commands as above and check with

DISPLAY=:0 xset -q

the screensaver stays enabled. If you guys need to verify it is disabled, just run the above command and check if the following lines appear like that:

Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  no    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  0    cycle:  600

DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 600    Suspend: 600    Off: 600
  DPMS is Disabled

If blanking and timeout are yes and not 0 the screensaver is active (DPMS should also show disabled)

@madscientist So, experiment done. This is the result of 24h continues running. You can see the temperature has not quiet stabilized but the trend is well below anything critical. My guess would be that with a glass cover instead of the wooden frame I used to insulate the power dissipation should be even better.

@rak

have you tried this? (#ff0000 just for presentation)

body {
  text-shadow: 1px 1px #ff0000;
}

@cubesmi that is amazing to hear, glad I could help. And thanks for checking the option with the wires. :)
edit: yes vgencmd does the trick

@flo thanks, I am very happy with it. The tiles on my wall don’t look too nice so I made the mirror as big as possible to cover that. But this design can be adapted to any size. I am guessing it weighs around 10kg. I strengthened the MDF basckplate with epoxy and used these:

to mount it to the wall. Plaster shouldn’t be a problem if you use the correct dowels and instead of two hooks you can use three if needed. Also a smaller size reduces the weight even more.

I need one more person to dismount the mirror. As I don’t want to grab on the glass plate.

I mentioned it before, but this is the frame I used (Nielsen 222):

The 25mm part is attached to doubled sided tape and holds the glas. The small inset is used for 4x4mm Rivets on each corner to screw the MFD backpate on the aluminum frame. Also strengthened with epoxy and a metal plate to distribute the total force.

That’d be the final result. The wire on the first picture I was just too lazy to hide. Just needs to be pushed down.

Second picture shows the news podcast as an ovelay. No unnecessary buttons, PIR sensors or anything else that’d destroy the design.

Side note: I added an automatic Wifi Setup Feature which plays a video when it isn’t connected to a WiFi network and creates a hotspot for initial setup.

@MichMich thanks for the amazing project you created. I have had some people at my home being absolutely amazed by the mirror. I always refer them to the spirit of open source and this great community.

@flo no, the “big” Benq logo is disabled via the developer menu of the monitor. You would only see a small “HDMI1” in the lower right. Yeah, I will post a a few pics in an hour when it is a bit darker outside. Hold on :D.

@flo actually I have not, I power the monitor via my relay and my presence dedection makes me never see the logo so so far there was no need to do that

@secdude I chose 4mm glas because it is already heavy enough to mount the mirror like that.

@nobita just install raspotify https://github.com/dtcooper/raspotify

the easy way (but I recommend reading the docs):

curl -sL https://dtcooper.github.io/raspotify/install.sh | sh

@sharpy400 thanks, I will try immediately. I honestly tried finding a module like that, but that must one I must have overseen.

edit: nope, won’t work, seems spotify has changed the way they give out API keys none of the instructions will work. Spotify Connect Web seems to rely on libspotify which is obsolete.

@raywo Your module is amazing. I am using raspotify on my mirror, which is account independent and I was just wondering if there is a chance of implementing spotify connect meta data (e.g. from using raspotify). Instead of using your account as input for the track info using the output from

systemctl raspotify status

as the track id. And then use spotifys web api to get the song info?

https://developer.spotify.com/console/get-track/?id=1yVhDVRJt9o8DQDU3J6R4X&market=

like this?

That is how I do it, I use a HUE Dimmer Switch and FHEM to control it.

elif self.path=='/down':
            status='Volume down'
            subprocess.Popen(["amixer", "set", "Master", "8%-"], preexec_fn=os.setsid)
elif self.path=='/up':
            status='Volume up'
            subprocess.Popen(["amixer", "set", "Master", "8%+"], preexec_fn=os.setsid)