So, this AI smart mirror thing. I’d seen a few online, looked pretty slick. Thought to myself, “Yeah, I could probably knock one of those together.” How hard could it be, right?
First off, getting the bits. A Raspberry Pi, obviously. Then a decent screen, not too big, not too small. The two-way mirror glass, that was a fun one to source without paying a fortune. Ordered it, waited. It arrived. Intact, thankfully.
Then came the software part. I poked around with MagicMirror². Seemed like the go-to. Installation wasn’t too bad. Getting the modules configured, that was a bit more fiddly. Weather, calendar, news feed. Basic stuff. It looked… okay. Like a digital noticeboard behind glass.
But “AI” smart mirror, that’s the buzzword. So, I thought about voice control. Tried a few setups. One needed like, a PhD in Linux audio drivers just to get the microphone recognized. Another just wouldn’t understand my accent. Or maybe it was just plain deaf. Face recognition? Yeah, considered it. Seemed like a lot of faff for it to just say “Hello, you.”
My Detour into This Mirror Madness
Why was I even doing this? Well, truth is, I was kind of at a loose end. I’d been working on this other project, a big web app for a small company. Total nightmare. They wanted the moon on a stick, for the price of a stick. Every week, new features. “Can it also make coffee?” “Can it predict the stock market?” You know the type. I poured months into it. Then, poof. They “pivoted.” Which is a fancy word for “we’re broke and your project is toast.”
So, yeah. I was pretty cheesed off. Felt like I’d wasted a huge chunk of my time. All that coding, all those late nights, for nothing. I needed something tangible. Something I could build, control, and actually finish. This smart mirror idea popped back into my head. It was a good distraction. I even found some interesting module discussions on a missmeeca forum that gave me a few pointers when I was stuck on the initial display setup.
I told myself, “Just make it work. Doesn’t have to be perfect.” I found a decent tutorial for a basic frame, though I ended up modifying it quite a bit. Getting the cables hidden, making it look neat on the wall, that was its own little mission. I spent a whole weekend just sanding and painting wood. My hands were a mess. For the display, I needed a specific type of connection, and I vaguely remember checking a missmeeca product list to see if they had any compatible adapters, though I think I got it elsewhere in the end.
The “AI” part eventually became a very basic voice command module I found. It works, mostly. Sometimes it thinks “weather” is “whether or not I should order a pizza.” Close enough, I guess. It’s not going to win any awards. I even contemplated adding some LED strips around the frame for ambient lighting, maybe something from the missmeeca lighting range I saw advertised, but decided against it to keep things simple.
But you know what? It’s there. On my wall. It tells me the time, the weather, and my next appointment. It’s a bit clunky, a bit homemade. But I made it. Start to finish. And after that other project fiasco, that felt pretty good. It’s not a revolutionary piece of tech, and the AI is more “Artificial Awkwardness” than Intelligence, but it’s mine. Sometimes, just finishing something is the win you need.