Although they come across as advanced builds, the community behind the projects have made significant advances in making magic mirrors accessible to all. The information displayed is typically what you need as you’re preparing to leave the house: weather, news headlines, and transit information. Initially created by combining old laptops and semi-reflective observation glass, they appear as normal mirrors but with text and images that appear to float in mid-air. ![]() “You can create a very affordable display.Magic mirrors have to be one of the most popular projects out there. “You can pick up refurbished, second-hand iPad LCDs on eBay for very good prices, especially if they have a couple of dead pixels,” Chris says. “The driver boards come with VGA and composite connectors which are quick thick compared to the actual PCBs.” There was also a problem with the screen’s brightness, solved using tinted acetate sheets, but otherwise everything went to plan. “The main challenge was ensuring the components wouldn’t stick out from behind the mirror too much,” he reveals. From that point, it was a matter of fitting everything together. “But there is some really nice magic mirror software available for Raspberry Pi, so I may look at switching over at some point,” he muses. “It’s also so affordable but can still run a full operating system with a GUI and it has wireless LAN, too – those are probably the most important things for this project because I really needed to be able to run a web browser,” Chris says.Īfter setting the Chromium browser to auto-start in full-screen kiosk mode, it was pointed at Chris’s magic mirror URL. Being thin, it fits nicely behind the mirror. Raspberry Pi Zero W – powered using a 5 V buck converter and running Raspberry Pi OS – proved to be a perfect match. “The driver boards to seem to be fairly standard now.” “The main thing to check is that it’s definitely compatible with the first iPad’s LCD screen which has the model number LP097X02,” Chris says. ![]() Once he’d isolated the screen, it was then a case of hooking it up to a Raspberry Pi Zero W. As my glass was already cracked, I went with a much more brute force approach.” “In theory, you should just be able to pop the glass out from the metal frame, and using a thin metal spudger seems to be the way to go. “It’s a lot easier if the glass is not already cracked,” he explains. ![]() ![]() Unfortunately, this was the most difficult part of the build. “I knew, from watching a few videos on iPad repairs, that the LCD screen was completely separate from the glass, so it seemed a shame to throw the whole thing away without at least trying to salvage some components,” he says. The project entailed removing and using the iPad’s screen. What’s more, since he’d already written a magic mirror web page and server, the switch proved relatively easy. By swapping it for an iPad, however, he was able to liberate the Amazon-made Fire device for day-to-day use. “The glass was also cracked and the batteries didn’t charge, so it was heading to the bin.” Or at least it was until Chris decided to use it as the basis for a magic mirror.Ĭhris had explored such a project before, using a Fire tablet for the display. “My iPad was so old that apps didn’t really work any more and the Safari browser wasn’t performing well with modern websites,” he says.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |