The mirror that thinks along

Experimental setup

1. 01
   The glass. A two-way mirror: from the front it reflects, from behind bright light shines through. So whatever the screen behind it shows appears in your reflection.
2. 02
   The computer. A Raspberry Pi 3 runs MagicMirror². If it restarts or something crashes, PM2 brings everything back up by itself.
3. 03
   The modules. A clock with sun and moon times, calendar, weather with a forecast, moon phase and news. Plus a saying and a Pokémon, because that is simply what you need in the morning.
4. 04
   The motion sensor. A sensor notices when someone stands in front of it and wakes the screen. Afterwards it goes back to sleep. A dark mirror is not a fault, just rest.

Evidence

Sayings and Pokémon

At the bottom of the mirror there is always a saying. 287 are in stock, and which one appears depends on the time of day and the weather. In the morning there is encouragement, in the rain a warning, at night a look at the stars. The sayings are in German; a few examples, translated:

• “You look great today!”
• “Your hair is amazing today!” morning
• “The sun wants to play hide and seek today! Man, is it good at it.” cloudy
• “If you are wearing shoes with holes right now, you will get wet socks” rain
• “Cats inside? It will rain tonight!” rain at night

The Pokémon sits at the top left, delivered by the module MMM-DailyPokemon. Every twelve hours one of 802 is drawn and shown with its German name, type and stats. In greyscale, to suit the mirror, and in the style of the Game Boy Advance.

Build your own (DIY)

The mirror is home-made, from the wooden frame to the wiring. Inside:

• Two-way mirror as the front, a mirror from the front, see-through from behind
• A dismantled monitor: panel, controller board and power board screwed into the frame one by one, without a case
• Wooden frame, home-made, open at the back for air and cables
• Raspberry Pi 3 with its own power supply
• PIR motion sensor on GPIO 23
• The power button trick: GPIO 24 presses the monitor’s power button, GPIO 25 reads back whether it is really on

Software: MagicMirror² with PM2, plus a Python script of our own for the motion sensor and a nightly restart. It switches the screen on first, because otherwise the Pi does not recognise a switched-off monitor properly at boot.

Why?

Because you look in the mirror in the morning anyway. So it might as well tell you whether you need an umbrella. And that your hair looks right.

Test result

Operational. The test subject saw themselves in the mirror and the weather along with it.