Introduction

Almost everyone has a mirror in their home. Whether it is in their washroom, bedroom, or hallway, it is a part of daily life. My end goal is to create efficiency by combining something so simple, like a mirror, with programs to help a person save time by presenting them with simple, easy-to-read daily information that is usually found by cell phone apps. Another purpose of the 'magic mirror' can be a piece of an efficient smart home, with date and time plus weather tracking specific to an area with constantly updating news and outdoor camera feeds, this piece of technology can benefit many households.

Driving question

The reason I chose this project is that I like to be efficient with anything I do and I prefer to have everything shown to me at once, as opposed to having to search for it on my mobile device. This can not only help me be efficient but help cut down on screen time; a very big problem amount young adults like me. I asked myself, How can you create something to help make people more efficient that they will use in their daily life?

Materials

With anything having to do with electronics and physical construction, you want to remain safe. I've compiled a list of basic safety tools and how they will apply to my PBL, to help anyone who wants to recreate this safe.

A resperator, to keep sawdust and fumes out of your lungs when cutting/ staining wooden building materials

Safety glasses, to protect your eyes in case of wood chips flying or glass shattering

Anti-static thick gloves, to protect your hands from cuts in case of the glass shattering and to protect the sensitive electronics from dying due to static discharge.

Parental supervision is highly reccomended, as you will be dealing with cutting materieal to size and fastening in or drilling some parts of the electronics and frame.

My PBL project has many aspects, and the steps can be alternated, but the steps below is how I did mine to maximize my efficiency and minimize down time.

After searching for ways to create my own smart screen I came across a widely used program built for Raspbian OS, Magic Mirror 2. After reading on about it I figured out it was a community of people who used this program to customize their mirrors. To save time coding my own program, I knew this was the more sensible path to take.

Please note!!!

These steps will create a magic mirror with some modules. It will not autostart, you have to download pm2 script off the Magic Mirror website. It is very helpful throughout this coding process. My most used command was

pm2 restart mm

It basically restarted the magic mirror to test your tweaking with the modules. I have broken it sometimes but there is a recovery file you can copy and paste into the main config. I reccomend trying this every time you change a module, if it crashes do

/*
(the module you messed up on)
function = true,
another function = false,
exampleFunction = "imperal",
*/

Doing the */ | /* in the code comments out that part and it should ignore it and use the other modules. This is helpful if you cannot figure it out, you can simply copy paste from the recovery.

To attach the monitor, I put in the wires and used scraps to secure it to the other frame. I used screws to fasten down my Raspberry Pi in a position towards an open vent I made to allow airflow and prevent overheating. Then I used the double sided LEDs on the back of the front frame for aesthetics.

In an attempt to prevent multiple wires coming from the mirror, I tied down my power strip and made all the connections. Then I made minor adjustments for channels so the wires are managed better.

All that was left was to plug it in and watch the pi Boot up.

The scientific part of my project is more psychological, as it has to do with the human brain and digesting information. It goes into trying to prevent the harm that excessive screen time creates for a human. Although a mirror may seem like something simple, but cutting down on the 15 minutes spent on average, daily, trying to find this information, can add up. It adds to 1:45 minutes per day, 7 hours per month, and 84 hours per year. When it adds up, it is made apparent that even 15 minutes, done constantly racks up many hours in harmful, excessive screen time.