“Using a BeagleBone Black, you can create a custom smart mirror to keep you up to date and on track in the mornings when getting ready.
Story
This project consists of a reflective pane of acrylic with a monitor behind it, creating a mirror that can display useful widgets like the date, the weather, and a daily fortune, among other things. It is a sleek device useful for quickly gathering daily information while, for instance, getting dressed or brushing teeth.
Building the Mirror Enclosure
Once all supplies are purchased, we can start to determine dimensions and design of the frame itself. For our project, we used a mirror that was 1ft by 2ft in size, while this is not very large, we felt like it was a good start. The frame itself actually measures 18.5” by 30.5” on the outermost dimensions. There are few things to take into consideration with the outer frame:
Makingthemirrorfit: The easiest way to get the mirror to sit within the frame is to account for a small amount of the mirror to sit behind the frame. Our frame is designed to be half of an inch short in the horizontal and vertical length. This means that a quarter of an inch is overhung holding the mirror in place
Make it pretty: While our project may not look that pretty, it is very easy to make this mirror look like one you can buy off the shelf. Rather than using normal 1x4’s for the outer frame, you can use molding to add more flair. Stain and paint are two other options to spice up the look of the mirror.
Build the Outer Frame: To build the frame, you are going to need two boards at the shorter length and two at the longer length. So for ours, we needed two boards at 18.5” and two at 30.5”. It is important to remember that if you are going to angle the edges rather than having straight connections, use the small length as the starting point of the 45 degree cut. So when cutting the 18.5” board, you are going to want to measure 11.5” between the two angles as the extra 7” account for the width of the long boards. Here is a picture of the back of our frame. We both glued these corners and used corner brackets to make the edges more secure.”