• Glass (Mirror) – Pilkington Mirrorpane
  

Glass was the most expensive part of my build ($200.00 CDN). Reading though various posts, others said they ended up with a fun house effect when using one-way film on acrylic. I had a local glass supplier cut me this piece of 6mm Pilkington Mirrorpane. I find it works well in the right lighting conditions, if it’s too bright it doesn’t allow much graphics to come through. The manufacturer recommends a light ratio of 8:1 from front to back for good results. It also has an amber hue which looks nice but your stuck with that color tone.

• Screen – 39″ LED TV Insignia NS-39D400NA14

A Craigslist bargain at $150.00 CDN. I had issues with HDMI CEC commands for turning the display on and off but got around that issue another way (more on that later)

• Wood – Walnut Plywood With Solid Edging

I’m a hobbyist woodworker so my frame is made from scrap. There really isn’t that much wood here though and solid wood edging certainly not necessary but I prefer it.

• Raspberry Pi3

A Pi3 is nice if you plan to use the integrated WiFi but others have built them with a Pi2 or even a Pi0

• Power Supply – CanaKit 2.5A Raspberry Pi Micro USB
  
• USB Microphone –  SunFounder USB 2.0 Mini Microphone
• USB Extension Cable (for Microphone)
• Motion sensor – Aukru HC-SR501
• RGB LED

Most parts are my original design and here for everyone to use:

Speaker Grill

Motion Senor HC-SR501 Mount

Cankit Raspberry Pi Power Supply Mount

Adjustable Screen Mount

RGB LED Mount

Insignia TV Control Panel

Pi VESA Mount

Check out the following video I made on building of the frame. The design slightly deviated from the original CAD rendering.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive configuration guide but I will go over some basic stuff. I installed Raspbian Stretch Lite and followed this guide.

I played with my of the amazing user submitted modules before reeling it back in for a more “meat & potatoes” approach. Be sure to at least try MMM-EyeCandy.

Installed modules to date:

• MMM-MyCalendar
• MMM-cryptocurrency
• MMM-Wunderlist-Enhanced
• MMM-RemoteControl

As long as you have enabled the alert module (default), the magic mirror will poll every modules associated git repositories and alert you if you are behind on any commits. I thought this was cool but I ended writing the following script in /home/pi/myscripts/mm_update.sh to automate updating to every midnight.

[sourcecode language=”bash” wraplines=”false” collapse=”false”] #!/bin/bash

# Update modules
for d in /home/pi/MagicMirror/modules/* ; do (cd "$d" && git pull && npm install); done
# Update MM
cd "/home/pi/MagicMirror/"; git pull && npm install
# Restart MM
sudo /sbin/shutdown -r now[/sourcecode]

chmod the script to make it executable

[sourcecode language=”bash” wraplines=”false” collapse=”false” gutter=”false”] chmod +x /home/pi/myscripts/mmm_update.sh[/sourcecode]

Then edit your crontab:

[sourcecode language=”bash” wraplines=”false” collapse=”false” gutter=”false”] sudo crontab -e[/sourcecode]

Add the following line to run the update script every midnight

[sourcecode language=”bash” wraplines=”false” collapse=”false” gutter=”false”] @midnight /home/pi/myscripts/mmm_update.sh[/sourcecode]

AlexaPi is an awesome initiative. There are also two MagicMirror modules designed to display or integrate with Alexa, These modules are called MMM-alexa and MMM-awesome-alexa. I was really exited to have Alexa built right into my mirror but found that configuring AlexaPi and the MagicMirror modules to be a little too finiky. I also prefer just having Alexa display her status via a dedicated response LED so I just installed AlexaPi without integrating it into the MagicMirror frame work. For AlexaPi installation, I head over to their wiki for instructions.

My AlexaPi installation combined with a low cost USB microphone does not yield the best results however. Currently, Alexa only listens to men but maybe messing with pocketsphinx or Snowboy might improve those results. Here is a picture of the top of my mirror with the LED and motion sensor mounts.

Having the mirror go to sleep while no one is there to admire it was was big on my list. The MMM-PIR-Sensor does this pretty well, especially if your TV native supports all HDMI CEC commands. My TV only supported the status command, for reasons unknown. I chose to use the Pi’s GPIO (PIN 15) to pull the TV’s factory power button the ground, which is effectively simulating a user pressing the power button.

After installing the HDMI CEC utility I created a python script to run as a daemon and monitor the motion sensor and turn the TV on and off when required. I uploaded the script to /home/pi/myscripts/ty_manager.py

[sourcecode language=”python” wraplines=”false” collapse=”false”]</pre>

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os, sys, subprocess, time, argparse, logging, datetime
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

from apscheduler.schedulers.background import BackgroundScheduler

PWR_PIN = 15
PIR_PIN = 14
isdisplayon = False

def monitor_checkstatus():
global isdisplayon
logging.debug(‘[*] CEC -&gt; check current status of display’)
process_echo = subprocess.Popen(["echo", "pow", "0"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=False)
process_cec = subprocess.Popen(["cec-client", "-s", "-d", "1"], stdin=process_echo.stdout,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=False)
process_echo.stdout.close()
ret = process_cec.communicate()[0].splitlines()
if ‘on’ in ret[1]:
logging.debug("[*] Display is currently on")
isdisplayon = True
else:
logging.debug("[*] Display is currently off")
isdisplayon = False

def monitor_toggle():
GPIO.output(15, GPIO.LOW)
time.sleep(1)
GPIO.output(15, GPIO.HIGH)

def main(argv):
global isdisplayon
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser( description=’A Power managment daemon for issuing CEC commands’ )
parser.add_argument("-v", "–verbose", help="increase output verbosity",
action="store_true")
args = parser.parse_args()
if args.verbose:
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)
logging.debug(‘[*] Launching powermanager.py in DEBUG mode’)

GPIO.setwarnings(False)
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(PWR_PIN, GPIO.OUT, initial=GPIO.HIGH)

scheduler = BackgroundScheduler()
job = scheduler.add_job(monitor_checkstatus, ‘interval’, minutes=20)
scheduler.start()

monitor_checkstatus()

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(PIR_PIN, GPIO.IN)

while True:
# PIR triggered
if GPIO.input(PIR_PIN):
if not isdisplayon:
logging.debug(‘[*] Motion detected, CEC -&gt; Turning on display’)
monitor_toggle()
isdisplayon = True
else:
if isdisplayon:
logging.debug(‘[*] No motion, CEC -&gt; Turning off display’)
monitor_toggle()
isdisplayon = False
time.sleep(1)

GPIO.cleanup()

if __name__ == "__main__":
main(sys.argv)
<pre>[/sourcecode]

Then create a the following systemd service file /usr/lib/systemd/tv_manager.service

[sourcecode language=”plain” wraplines=”false” collapse=”false”] [Unit] Description=TV Power Manager Service
After=multi-user.target

[Service] Type=idle
ExecStart=/home/pi/myscripts/tv_manager.py

[Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target[/sourcecode]

That wraps up this build post. Please hit me back with any questions/comments!