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How to build a super-slim smart mirror

raspberrypi.com

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Re: How to build a super-slim smart mirror

#21

Post by olex »

ale42 wrote: post #10
criddell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about a similar project once and the electricity cost was about $1 / month. Am I way off on my calculations?

At the current electricity prices we're paying here (~$0.35/kWh), this would be around 4 W of continuous consumption. That's not a lot, you can basically power you Pi with it, but not the screen... count at least 10x more costs to operate the screen 24h a day. But as mentioned by someone, if you use a sensor to only turn on the screen when there's someone in front of it (and if you actually turn OFF your screen when…

On the Raspberry Pi, you can pretty easily switch off the HDMI output via shell commands, which sends most displays into low-power standby. It takes a couple seconds to switch back on and wake the screen when activity is detected, but the tradeoff is easily worth it.

Re: How to build a super-slim smart mirror

#23

Post by Damogran6 »

My wife had a monitor die early (16 months?) and I'd LOVE to turn it into a screen. The problem is that I'm betting the panel is fine, and the power is fine, but finding a driver board is near impossible, and I don't know enough about driving a screen to roll my own. (It's a 24" 2k screen, which would be awesome, and I kinda don't want to recycle it if I can conceivably reuse it.)

Re: How to build a super-slim smart mirror

#24

Post by Damogran6 »

wartijn_ wrote: post #13
cs02rm0 wrote: post #3

I went to do this sort of thing the other day. First thing I did was try and find a Pi Zero 2 W. Discovered most models of Raspberry Pi are completely unavailable. And so, another side project was canned.

That has been the situation ever since the worldwide chip shortage hit. Raspberry Pi (the company) decided to prioritize companies that use Raspberry Pi's in their products over consumers. So it became almost impossible to get a Raspberry Pi, unless you were willing to pay a huge markup to a scalper. The situation should improve this year though. > As a result, we can say with confidence that, after a lean first quar…

Our trailer has a 'cloud gateway' that allows you to see/control it from the internet. The box that does that is a raspberry pi with a dedicated hat to power it, in a custom box. They want $450 for a new one when the Pi's SD card poops out.

Re: How to build a super-slim smart mirror

#25

Post by dan1234 »

Damogran6 wrote: post #23

My wife had a monitor die early (16 months?) and I'd LOVE to turn it into a screen. The problem is that I'm betting the panel is fine, and the power is fine, but finding a driver board is near impossible, and I don't know enough about driving a screen to roll my own. (It's a 24" 2k screen, which would be awesome, and I kinda don't want to recycle it if I can conceivably reuse it.)

You're probably best off looking for the same model monitor with a broken panel but working driver board.

Re: How to build a super-slim smart mirror

#28

Post by mft_ »

nsteel wrote: post #19

How are there exactly zero photos showing how slim this thing is/isn't!?! EDIT: In other news, the settings menu of Pi Imager is brilliant. It automagically fills in your RSA public key, your WiFi details, and other time-saving details. I can't believe how hard we had to fight the RPi devs to make the feature usable and stop hiding it behind a weird keypress combo (to the point we released a fork). They were obsessed…

It's sad that the Raspberry Pi, which was originally conceived as a simple and accessible computer for people to learn new skills, has become so intertwined with the user-unfriendliness of Linux. (The comparison with the simplicity of the original BBC Micro is comical.)

You give one example of how the devs (who, of course, fully 'get' Linux and are fully bought in to the experience) have seemingly little insight into how this impacts less able users. (Somehow they think that creating ssh and wpa_supplicant.conf files in the boot folder are less confusing then an extra option in the installer!?)

Other examples (from my very recent experience) include simply trying to install fairly mainstream libraries on a Pi: it took (literally) several days, multiple retries, multiple failed approaches from blogs or stackoverflow, before I could get a working install of python-opencv. (And my final 'success' was just sheer luck, plus trial-and-error, I think).

And there are other examples; every time I start a new project thinking the Pi is the perfect starting-point, the ultimate time taken is 5-10x what it probably should have been.

If the user experience is this bad for someone with otherwise strong IT ability, how on earth do they expect anyone with less expertise to succeed?

Re: How to build a super-slim smart mirror

#29

Post by vrosas »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #3

I went to do this sort of thing the other day. First thing I did was try and find a Pi Zero 2 W. Discovered most models of Raspberry Pi are completely unavailable. And so, another side project was canned.

Yep. I got all excited to set up a PiHole at one point during the pandemic and then realized how impossible it was to actually buy a raspberryPi and gave up. Hopefully one day

Re: How to build a super-slim smart mirror

#30

Post by axus »

olex wrote: post #21
ale42 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the current electricity prices we're paying here (~$0.35/kWh), this would be around 4 W of continuous consumption. That's not a lot, you can basically power you Pi with it, but not the screen... count at least 10x more costs to operate the screen 24h a day. But as mentioned by someone, if you use a sensor to only turn on the screen when there's someone in front of it (and if you actually turn OFF your screen when…

On the Raspberry Pi, you can pretty easily switch off the HDMI output via shell commands, which sends most displays into low-power standby. It takes a couple seconds to switch back on and wake the screen when activity is detected, but the tradeoff is easily worth it.

How much energy to run a microphone, waiting for "Mirror, mirror, on the wall..."
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