Magic Mirror

This is a description for building a magic mirror. It costs around 60-70 €. I have always wanted to build a magic mirror but didn't quite have the money since it is around 200 to 300 € for a full-size frame, display and mirror. So, I ordered the test glass set from GlasStar and thought that I could maybe use the rather cheap but high-quality test glass for a good magic mirror. And here we are.

Supplies:

• Mirror Testing Set from GlasStar (my sizes are different from the website, so maybe you have to adjust this size. You also get two mirror plates, so you can build two mirrors by ordering once)
• Raspberry Pi Zero 2W/Pi 3/Pi 4
• 10.1 Display with HDMI from AliExpress
• HDMI Cable with a 90 degree turn
• 2* Micro USB cables
• 3* M4 heat inserts and screws with a length of 15 mm
• 6806 Bearing for a smooth turning knob 
• 1.5 mm wire as a door hinge
• 3 mm Plywood around 0.3 m^2
• 5 mm Plywood around 0.1 m^2
• wood glue
• TesaKlebenagel

Assembly:

Here you can see the little spot I marked for drilling the hole. You can also cut it out with the laser, so you have no problem with marking the right spot. 

Glue the door:

After this, also drill the holes at the marked dots with a 1.5 mm drill. I used a stand drill and a second hand of a friend to be sure that it doesn't break.

Now you can assemble the opening mechanisms. Melt the heat inserts into the knob and make sure that they don't overlap. After I was sure that they did not overlap, I heat them up, pushed them in and after that tried to push them on a surface. Put the spacer between the bearing and the gear and screw the M4 screws in. 

The next step is to assemble the gear system. Take the back with the assembled door hinge. You put the HelicalRack into the slider and press it firmly to the gear. At this position, you glue the slider. Do this for the top and bottom. After this, you can take the schlossA/B and glue them at the spots where the HelicalRacks leaves the door. But be careful, don't glue the back on the main frame yet. We have to add the mirror glass and the display later.
I added some soft gummy for a better fit for the door.

Hardware:

Install the SpyMirror and take the display Spacer and the Display, put them into the case. Add some black tape. I used isolation tape for mine. The tape is used to block the white, shining wood. The SpyMirror isn't perfect, but it can help to remove all white parts. A lot of people use a black cloth for this.

Raspberry is mounted on a mount which you can glue with some double-sided tape to the display.

Here you have to shorten an old micro-usb cable to a length around 15 cm. You have to reconnect the red and black wires for the power. You can ignore the other two cables, because they are only for data transfer. We use this cable for powering the display directly from the pi.

Here you can see the finished cabling.

Optional:

I added a nice-looking a cable. You can also use a cable directly from the pi to your power supply. This cable creates more work because You have to cut a second micro-usb cable and solder their red and black connects to the power cable. I used cable ties to fix the cable.

The Last step for the assembly is gluing the back panel on. Sadly, my screw clamps were 5 mm short, so I had to use tape to hold everything together while drying.

Mounting:

For mounting, I used the TesaKlebenagel. A super simple and easy way to mount things to your wall without drilling holes. But you can also use the regular way to mount it on the wall.

Software:

For the setup I used the Raspberry Pi imager. With this program you can prepare the micro-sd-card for the Raspberry Pi with the correct firmware. I used Raspbian. Here you should set up the Wifi-connection and add ssh connection.

After the card is prepared, you can put it into the raspberry and connect the power to the pi. Now you should install Putty which is program to connect to the pi via ssh. In putty, you type the name you gave the ssh connection in the sd-card preparation.

You should see a connection that asks for a username.

User: pi

password: raspberry (you can't see the password so keep on tipping the password and press enter) 

Install MagicMirror²: To execute the installation script, copy/paste this line into the terminal window on your device.  That can take some time. (For pasting into Putty you can use the right-click on your mouse)

bash -c  "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts/master/raspberry.sh)"

Turn off screen saver and setup pm2 to autostart MM on boot.

bash -c "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts/master/screensaveroff.sh)"

Edit the shown extensions:

This is the page for edeting the user interface aka what the mirror displays.

cd
sudo nano MagicMirror/config/config.js

In my case I wanted a clock, a list with my upcoming appointments from my Google calendar and the weather report from my region. There are many more mods and upgrades for the 

magic mirror software like face detection, a mod that shows which Spotify song you are playingand many other mods. Here is an example for my configuration file. You can find much more on the MagicMirror side.

var config =
{
  address: '0.0.0.0',
  ipWhitelist: [],
  language: 'de',
  modules: [
    {
      module: 'clock',
      position: 'top_bar',
      config: {}
    },
    {
      module: 'calendar',
      header: 'Kalender',
      position: 'middle_center',
      config: {
        colored: true,
        timeFormat: 'absolute',
        urgency: 0,
        getRelative: 0,
        maximumEntries: 6,
        dateFormat: 'MMM Do HH:mm',
        calendars: [
          {
            url: 'link to your calender',
            symbol: 'calendar-check'
          },
          {
            url: 'link to your calender',
            symbol: 'cake'
          },
        ]
      }
    },
    {
      module: 'weather',
      position: 'bottom_bar',
      header: 'Weather Forecast',
      config: {
        type: 'forecast',
        location: '',
        locationID: '',
        apiKey: ''
      }
    }
  ],
  useHttps: false,
  httpsPrivateKey: '',
  httpsCertificate: '',
  locale: 'de-DE'
}

Conclusion:

In the end, I learned a lot about making and creating a magic mirror. This was a little test I wanted to make, if I ever rework this project the magic mirror will be four times bigger, because it's really annoying to be limited to which mods that you can use. I hope you enjoy the building your own magic mirror and learn some things, too.

If you like to, check out my other designs too!