In what has turned into a popular first project on the Raspberry Pi single board computer I designed a magic mirror for a work presentation on the future of IOT devices. The concept of the mirror is a computer display behind a one-way mirror on the transparent side. When enclosed in a dark box the display will be able to shine through presenting any image/video through the mirror.
The build process starts with the Raspberry Pi computer. After some standard setup of the Pi’s OS was configurations to host an html file on a local tomcat server. The only requirement of the webpage is to have a black background to allow the mirror to still be reflective. I added in a scrolling RSS feed from NPR. Local weather information, and a link to 2 IP security cameras I had setup in my house. After formatting the website was a final config on the Raspberry Pi to auto start a browser window in fullscreen and navigate to the locally hosted file.
The frame was a simple handmade box. The side walls had holes drilled in them for airflow and a bezel mounted to the front so no pieces would fall out. The frame was made so the monitor could rest inside without bouncing around and a custom one way mirror was ordered to fit in. Initial plans were to hang the mirror from the frame but later designed so the monitor was the mounting point to the wall via a TV wall mount, and the frame would rest on the monitor. The Raspberry Pi output through HDMI to the monitor and was powered from a USB port on the monitor allowing for only a single power cable out of the mirror.
