Here is how you can make your own Raspberry Pi powered magic smart mirror
Remember our report in October 2015, in which a web developer, Evan Cohen built a Raspberry Pi powered magic smart mirror. Well, another developer, Dylan Pierce has not only built a similar magic smart mirror, he has come out with a complete do it yourself tutorial so that you can also build a magic mirror.
As with Cohen, Dylan also took inspiration from Michael Teeuw’s “Magic Mirror” concept and made his own successful voice command based ‘magic mirror.’
In order to build your own magic mirror you will need the following :
- A monitor
- A double sided acrylic mirror fit to the size of the monitor
- A few 2 x 4’s to build a case around the monitor
- Thin wood to build the forward facing mirror frame, I used 1/8 x 3’ board
- A raspberry pi and it’s needed components, i.e. the power supply, HDMI cord, wifi usb dongle, and a keyboard for initial setup
- Basic woodworking tools like a saw, sander, screwdriver
- Screws, liquid nails
Dylan has posted the complete mirrormirror code to run the magic mirror on Github here. According to Dylan, the total cost of building your own magic mirror can come to $390 + $20 for the coffee. Here is a complete breakup of the costs involved.
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Monitor | ~160 |
| Double Sided Mirror | ~60 |
| Wood for frame and case | ~120 |
| Raspberry Pi and components | ~50 |
| Coffee | ~20 |
| Total | ~410 |
All the costs are in East Coast US dollars.
If you are interested, you can access the complete tutorial for building your own magic mirror on Dylan’s blog here. The tutorial has details on installing Chromium, adding Wi-Fi network, installing web server and the mirrormirror code onto the magic mirror.
Current Features of the magic mirror.
- Displays forecast and animated weather icon.
- Displays Date and Time.
- Displays a random greeting, currently there’s only one but planning on adding more.
If you are a coder/developer, you can help Dylan to improve upon the mirrormirror code to include the following :
- Writing a script to do the setting up of the raspberry pi into kiosk mode for you
- Making a widget for google/apple calendars to show your schedule for today
- Microphone integration
I’m so trying this after my exams hype#
Which pi did you use? I have been looking into the project and I’m wondering which to get. The pi zero looks like it might become available again soon but Idk if it will be powerful enough. Very cool project though!!