Alright, everyone. I said I would start experimenting with the PIR sensor and experiment I did.
So first of all we started drilling a hole of diameter 8mm into one side of a piece of wood
(we went 5mm deep as this corresponds with the height of the cylindrical sensor):

This is not all we did, as you can see, we also drilled a hole of diameter 3mm on the other side,
but this time we made sure it went all the way through:

Next, we removed the Fresnel lens from the sensor:

After that, we put the sensor in the bigger hole which perfectly houses the whole cylinder:

Then we waited to see whether the mirror would turn itself on if we moved past the piece of wood.
And, hooray, it did!

Emboldened by this discovery, we started all over again, but this time with smaller holes on the other side,
so we ended up with this setup:

Simply ignore the rubber band, it’s there to hold the circuit board in place

Anyway, here’s the good news: The mirror recognizes somebody walking by if the hole is as small as 2 millimeters in diameter.
It did not work with a 1mm hole, but hey, are we living in a perfect world?

Anyway, this solution is good enough for me, we will drill a 2mm hole in the bottom center area of the mirror frame and hide the sensor behind it.
I’m thinking we might even be able to make the hole less apparent by choosing a piece of wood similar to the one above
with some nice-looking wood grain and / or knots.

Hi man. You can run the magic mirror on a Windows system if you install node.js, which is at the heart of the mirror:
https://nodejs.org/en/download/

I’m running a version of the MM on my desktop PC to build my modules, as it is much faster than my Raspberry Pi 1.
What takes forever to load on my Pi is instantly shown on my desktop PC.

I’m not sure if I can still remember how to set up the environment correctly, but try this:

1. Download node.js - https://nodejs.org/en/download/
2. Install it on your Windows 10 PC
3. Go to https://github.com/MichMich/MagicMirror, click on “Clone or download”, then “Download ZIP”
4. Extract the ZIP into a folder, e.g. D:\MagicMirror
5. Go to the config folder on your PC and configure your mirror via the config.js file
6. Open a Windows command prompt (Press WIN+R, type in “cmd”, hit ENTER)
7. Navigate to your MagicMirror folder (In my example: cd “D:\MagicMirror”)
8. Type “npm install” and hit ENTER
9. Type “node serveronly” and hit ENTER
10. Go to a browser of your choice (in W10 Edge is preinstalled and works) and in the address bar type in “localhost:8080” and hit ENTER

If you want to stop the mirror from running, either close the command prompt window (where you entered “node serveronly”) or press CTRL+C if the command prompt is your active window.

First of all, a big shout out to @ronny3050 for his impressive helpfulness in getting me started. I came across a really weird problem when I started developing this module and his willingness to help a newbie right away, made me feel very welcome here :).

Secondly, I want to thank @MichMich for his willingness to share his work and ideas. Trying to find a nice bathroom mirror and quite unhappy with the mirrors that are available on the market, I came across your project by chance and immediately fell in love with your invention. You could have easily used your idea to make a lot of money with your mirror, but instead you chose to share the fruits of your labor with the world. I hope that many, many others will follow your lead in the years to come :).

I only code in my spare time and have so far mostly worked on some simple web pages, but this project has pushed me to try and acquire a lot of new skills in a very short span of time. Github, npm, node.js, … . For the first few days I felt like I was drowning in a sea of information I couldn’t, for the life of me, get a grasp on, but now my first JavaScript modules are done, and I couldn’t be prouder :). So thanks to all of you for your great attitude and help.

Anyway, here’s my first module:

MMM-KVV shows departures times for any given stop of the Karlruhe local transport network on your mirror.

It is pretty customizable and I have tried to explain its installation and configuration on the Github page. Even though there may not be that many users here from the Karlsruhe area (if any), I look forward to hearing from you, should you come across any bugs or problems or should you find this module useful.

@cowboysdude I’m just not comfortable with the idea of a camera in my bathroom (or any other room, for that matter). Raspbian is a pretty open platform and I don’t want others to take control of any cameras I might have installed in my home. And it’s not like all sorts of people wouldn’t be interested in spying on other people.

Have started experimenting with the PIR sensor, it’s looking good so far, will let you guys know about my progress.

Glad to see I could help you :). The community spirit is what I love about this place…

If you want to automate your setup so that the laptop boots to the mirror on startup, you would probably have to run a batch file at startup which both runs the “node serveronly” command as well as starts up a browser in fullscreen mode. Haven’t looked into it, but do share your setup, should you get that to work as well.

And make sure to showcase your mirror once it’s done
https://forum.magicmirror.builders/category/12/show-your-mirror

Have fun piecing it together ^^

If, like me, you love the idea of using a bike-sharing service, you might appreciate this module :).
It shows the amount of available bikes at any given “nextbike” station and lists the bike numbers of up to five available bikes.

@cowboysdude We might just drill a tiny hole into the frame of the mirror and put the PIR behind it without its Fresnel cover. Will experiment with that idea some more.

@ianperrin Thanks for the clarification. I could swear I tried using “.compliments .xlarge” before posting as my own module css files use the same syntax and it looked like it didn’t work, but I’ve just tried it again and it’s working as it should :). Great to know.

I have found another detail that bothered me. If the calendar is set to ‘relative, 6 hours before an event occurs the calendar would start showing the time in relative terms (for example: “In 5 hours” - but then it would stay that way until it would switch to “In 4 hours” an hour later, which is pretty confusing as far as I’m concerned. If I’'m not mistaken, it stays pretty vague until 45 minutes before the event when the countdown truly starts).

I found this behavior rather counter-intuitive, as I might want to check the mirror to find out the exact time when an event starts. This is why I have introduced a tag getRelative, which can take any value between 0 and 48 hours. So if a user configures their calendar like this:

modules: [
...
    {
        module: 'calendar',
        position: 'top_left',   
        config: {
               getRelative: 0.5
          }
        }
    },
...

their events start getting relative half an hour before the event (“In 30 minutes”), if they decide they don’t like relative times at all, they can set it like this: getRelative: 0. This way, it is easier for users to customize the calendar’s relative behavior to their needs.

This is now included in my pull request.

On a related note: Can anybody tell me why there is a timeFormat: absolute option? I set my calendar to absolute but didn’t notice any difference.

Now that I’ve got my mirror running software-wise and I’m about to make an actual mirror out of it, I was wondering about how to make sure the screen background isn’t visible at night. My monitor supports DDC/CI but from the little information I could gather online, it seems the Pi doesn’t support controlling an external monitor via DDC/CI (yet?).

There’s ddccontrol, but at least on my Pi 1 it didn’t work when I tried to use it, but I also have no idea what I’m doing, as I’ve only recently started experimenting with my Pi and I’m lacking the background on how a computer communicates with the monitor. It seems that most linux distributions allow for a change of the brightness level via /sys/class/backlight, but the Pi’s backlight folder is empty.

Ideally I would like to attach a light sensor to my Pi that could automatically reduce screen brightness as soon as it gets dark inside a room, but to have that happen, I would have to find a way to adjust screen brightness using the Pi rather than my monitor’s OSD.

Any help is appreciated

@Jopyth Thanks for your interest in my module. As it says in the license, all you have to do is include the copyright notice, should you decide to base your module on mine. Good luck with your module development :).

Also, feel free to play around with it and submit a pull request, should you add additional features.

Thanks as well for your ideas on improving the module. I had originally toyed with the idea of allowing custom module headers but then decided against it as the way it works right now, you automatically notice should you have entered the wrong stop id, which is something that happened to me from time to time when I was still developing the module. If some people feel the need to change the header, I could see myself revisiting the idea.

The update timestamp might be interesting for some people as well, so I’ll consider implementing it. I wanted to have the module as uncluttered as possible and the more info you show, the easier it is to lose sight of what’s relevant.

Thanks again for your thoughts :). It’s always nice to have some fresh ideas to include in further development stages.

@Jay Thanks for your kind words, I’m happy to hear somebody else is running the module on their mirror, I’ve been wondering whether someone else from our our region might eventually turn up here :). Should you run into any issues, feel free to report them here or over on the Github page.

Unfortunately, there is very little I can do to help you with your request. The data is pulled from the same dataset as the results you can see listed on http://live.kvv.de - try it for your stop and you will see that the maximum number of connections is 10 in your web browser as well. This is the way the service is designed, so if the KVV people decide to change their API at some stage to allow for more connections, the module should automatically pick that up and offer you more connections as well. If your stop is in the inner-city area, you are bound to end up with trams and trains that depart within the next few minutes. If your stop is only serviced by one line, you can normally see pretty well into the future :).

It would be possible to add a config option to only show trams that depart in, say, 5 minutes or later, but this would only shorten your list to the few of the 10 given trams that depart in 5 minutes or later. There is no way for me to add an option to extend the list of trams into the future by cutting the first few connections. This is something the API people would have to do.

I thought I had added this information to the readme, but I’ve just notice that I hadn’t, so thanks for that, will add this piece of information.

@MichMich I agree with you, which is why you have merged what I have done already
https://github.com/MichMich/MagicMirror/tree/develop/modules/default/calendar

@dr0pb0x Anything is possible, but I doubt it. Please have @kapsolas help you with this, as I don’t have any direct way of testing it. As far as I’m concerned my code adjustments should work.

@strawberry-3-141 is right, but if you generally like the clock module the way it is and just don’t like the way the date is being displayed, you can simply change it as has been pointed out and add

/modules/default/clock/clock.js

to the end of the file .gitignore you can find in the MagicMirror main folder (for example by using sudo nano .gitignore).

Not sure, if you’re new to the Linux environment as well, you won’t see the file using the dir command, as the dot at the beginning makes it a hidden file. Anything you add to .gitignore will not be updated when you perform a git pull, so be careful with adding files to the list, as you may break your installation when some parts of the mirror get updated but others don’t. I wouldn’t worry about adding the clock module, though.

I have found another detail that bothered me. If the calendar is set to ‘relative, 6 hours before an event occurs the calendar would start showing the time in relative terms (for example: “In 5 hours” - but then it would stay that way until it would switch to “In 4 hours” an hour later, which is pretty confusing as far as I’m concerned. If I’'m not mistaken, it stays pretty vague until 45 minutes before the event when the countdown truly starts).

I found this behavior rather counter-intuitive, as I might want to check the mirror to find out the exact time when an event starts. This is why I have introduced a tag getRelative, which can take any value between 0 and 48 hours. So if a user configures their calendar like this:

modules: [
...
    {
        module: 'calendar',
        position: 'top_left',   
        config: {
               getRelative: 0.5
          }
        }
    },
...

their events start getting relative half an hour before the event (“In 30 minutes”), if they decide they don’t like relative times at all, they can set it like this: getRelative: 0. This way, it is easier for users to customize the calendar’s relative behavior to their needs.

This is now included in my pull request.

On a related note: Can anybody tell me why there is a timeFormat: absolute option? I set my calendar to absolute but didn’t notice any difference.

@dr0pb0x I’ve tried it with my forked version after changing the module to simply retrieve any picture from the internet. It’s working fine.
The only limitation is that you can’t set the MaxHeight in relative terms (percentages), other than that, it works as intended as far as I can tell without actually using the API.

@dr0pb0x Have you tried using my forked version here:
https://github.com/yo-less/MMM-Instagram

@dr0pb0x , @kapsolas I had a quick look at your code (Not a fan of the bit.ly link) and if you go about displaying the Instagram image this way:

	var imageWrapper = document.createElement("img");
	imageWrapper.src = tempimpage.photolink;
	imageWrapper.style.maxWidth = this.config.instaMaxWidth;
	imageWrapper.style.maxHeight = this.config.instaMaxHeight;
	imageDisplay.appendChild(imageWrapper);

you should be able to specify two parameters instaMaxWidth and instaMaxHeight that the user can change in their config.file so the beginning of your MMM-Instagram.js file would look like this:

    defaults: {
        format: 'json',
        lang: 'en-us',
        id: '',
        animationSpeed: 1000,
        updateInterval: 60000, // 10 minutes
        access_token: '',
        count: 200,
        min_timestamp: 0,
        loadingText: 'Loading...',
        instaMaxWidth: '100%',
        instaMaxHeight: '100%'
    },

Now, any user of your module could define their own maximum image width and height, either by specifying an absolute figure like ‘300px’ or in relative terms using ‘20%’ or the like. I’ve created a pull request, but I suggest you test my code first as I don’t have an Instagram account or Instagram API key to test it.

You can use my fork to do so: https://github.com/yo-less/MMM-Instagram

@cowboysdude: You’re welcome

Also, have a look at this post:

dmcinnes said in PIR sensor behind glass?:

Another possibility: I ordered a couple of these $2 microwave radar motion detectors to see if they will work behind my glass. Still waiting to receive them though:

http://m.ebay.com/itm/1pc-5-8GHZ-Microwave-Radar-Sensor-6-9M-Smart-Switch-for-Home-Control-/131864712562?txnId=1245760396003

More details:
http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/04/04/tiny-microwave-radar-module-detects-movements-up-to-9-meters-away-for-2/amp/