What I’m doing now is getting ideas from other people. I just drilled holes on the top and the bottom, so that’s probably not the most safe way to do it. There’s a lot of room for improvement, especially with airflow. I could build a simple square box of wood around the monitor, but what I didn’t think about was the complications of having a thin acrylic between the case and that frame in the front. The hardest part was I didn’t think logistically about how the depth of the mirror was going to work. **What kinds of setbacks did you have while building it? It’s always fun to go out of your specialty and try something new, so that’s what it was about.įitting the monitor in the wooden frame with the double-sided mirror facing outward. That’s kind of true! I’m not a woodworker at all. Somebody posted on Reddit and said this it looks like it’s done like a third grader’s finger painting. I thought it couldn’t be that hard to do the woodworking.
#Magic mirror diy software
I saw that guy’s blog and I already knew the software part. How much research did you do before launching into the project, or was it a simple matching of interests and timing? If I was using something like an Arduino you’re kind of limited to one little OED display, which is kind of like your basic pebble watch.
#Magic mirror diy how to
I know how to make a web server run and I know web technology, so I just tailored it to what I know. It uses a low level language, but my knowledge is in Linux. Why did you use that in particular?īecause it’s low level computing. It runs on a small computer call the Raspberry Pi. But if it had those then it could be a lot more interactive or turn on with certain phrases or when a face is detected, that kind of deal. At the moment, I configured it to screensaver-off because there’s no input available like a microphone or webcam. Is the text always present on this iteration of the mirror? Pierce sitting in front of the mirror displaying the raspberry pi boot sequence. Even the software makes it really simple for someone to follow along. It was a Christmas present, and I think since I made that tutorial so detailed that it’s easy. I’m not the first person to do it, but I think the timing was right. Why do you think it’s blown up in popularity so quickly? So this is my first woodworking project that involves a computer.
I built a couple web platforms for different companies, but I’ve never built a hardware thing. I work for a startup now, and I didn’t expect this whole thing to blow up!īut for the past few years everything’s been software.
I just started programming in college, and I wasn’t even a computer science major. I’ve been programming for a couple years now, but I’ve been a computer nerd my entire life. Is this the first time you’ve done anything like this or do you dabble in computer-based projects? Pierce removed the monitor from its plastic casing to be able to fit semi-flush with the wooden edge of the mirror. The reason for that is I’m hoping one day to have a microphone in it so you could say “mirror mirror” and it just turns on to respond to comments like that. Your unofficial name for it is ‘MirrorMirror?’ So I tweaked his design, wrote my own software for it, and thought it would be the perfect Christmas present for my girlfriend. When I saw another guy post a magic mirror idea I was trying to follow through with it, but a lot of parts were Europe-only. So I learned the basics of woodworking from just helping her out. My girlfriend has been doing woodworking for a couple years now. I talked to Pierce about his DIY tech, what he feels about his idea taking off on the internet, and how technology like this can eventually become normal in our everyday lives. It’s a basic version of the kind of sophisticated on screen displays you’ve seen for decades in sci-fi movies like Minority Report and Total Recall, except he made it easy to build. The mirror also - ta daaaaa! - shows you your reflection. Within days, and aided by a step-by-step blog post that made the rounds on all the right places on the internet, the smart mirror that he created after seeing a similar design on another blog has become the most buzzed about DIY project in a while.īy gutting a monitor that runs on a simple computer and placing it behind a thin two-way mirror that he fitted into a wood frame, Pierce created a widget-based smart mirror that can do such handy tricks as tell you the weather or list the latest top news stories, depending on how it’s programmed - the limits are really whatever you want to do with it. Dylan Pierce, a web designer in Philadelphia, thought he’d use some computer science and elbow grease to build a simple Christmas present for his girlfriend.
0 kommentar(er)
