#hackday

I’ve been seeing magic mirrors around the internet for a bit now and have been thinking of making one for months.  With the pi 4 dual monitor support it seemed like a perfect time for a  project

Materials * 24″x36″ acrylic mirror * 2 monitors - I’m very happy with these monitors.  They’re very thin and light, I didn’t even need to remove them from the casing * raspberry pi 4, heatsink * wood frame kit - This is actually for an art canvas, so it definitely isn’t going to provide the necessary support we need, so we’ll have to build it in the back * 1″x3″ piece of wood to cut to build the support structure for the back.  You’ll need a total of 96″ to build out 4 24 support pieces.  I also cut the corners into smaller blocks that angle perpendicular to the top bar * black board - I got this at an arts and craft store, a sturdy light board painted black or painted cardboard would work, the lighter the better and easy to cut * black felt * clamps * handsaw - I hope you got a circular saw * Sandpaper - Most of my day was spent sanding and dreaming of power tools * Glue - wood + superglue or gorilla glue * Paint if you want * Right angle ruler * Power drill and screws

A picture of all the materials App * BaseApp * Spotify * Googlephotos * Systemstats * Webview - this runs all the tumblr tv which powers the gifs.  Webviews out to tumblr.com/tv/simpsons for example

The cutting of the wood and painting were done prior to the build.  The assembly and  installation of modules and the app were a 1 day build

Building!

Squaring things off to cut

Nothing like handsawing barefoot

Lots of sanding ahead...

Watching paint dry...

More drying paint... The white is the outer frame the black is the back structure pieces

I actually bought 2 of the 24″ frame kits to glue 2 sides together to act as one of the support beams.   The frame portion became a nice holder for the top monitor

Build the frame and place the mirror in.  Use wood glue on the  corners, mallet the plastic corners in that it comes with.  Dont skimp on glue

Theres a small gap around the sides of the mirror and the frame that I padded with felt

Start lining things up and marking off exact mount points, also removed the protective stickers

Add the bottom monitor reversed and cut out the black board, we will need to cover the entire area that isn’t covered by monitor with board

Add the two support beams,  Stabilize with wood glue and screws.  This should be packed such that the monitors won’t move. Where monitor meats board, cover with the black felt held to the blackboard with wood glue.  I left a gap near the edges of each monitor with felt flaps that I can lift up later to place a motion detection camera for future use Glue in the corner squares and clamp them in place

Add the middle supports

Use the pi as a template to cut out a board and drill holes where the pi mount screws go.  The board is about an inch or so bigger than the pi.  Its from some packaging material I had at my apt, any small board will due, this gets glued to the backboard

After all the glue has dried.  Added some metal hooks to help support some wiring

Final product Backside

Overall I’m pretty happy with how reflective it is and I’m very happy with how sturdy it is.  From certain angles you can kind of see the outline of the monitor but its not much.  One thing is I totally didn’t cover up the monitor lights lol, so theres 2 dots - so cover those, I just say it adds to the aesthetic :)

Future things

I need to push some code changes to the magicmirror because it doesn’t support dual monitors.  I’m actually running two apps on different ports for each monitor and some hacking of the js/electron.js to change the x position.  But the app itself should be able to support extended displays, doesn’t seem like much code change i’ll make a pr when I get around to it.  This was for hackday and I was running out of time, gimme a break

Add motion camera, not really sure what it’ll do but i imagine it’ll turn on different modules

Hookup to bluetooth.  I plan on automating turning on and off the monitors and apps when it detects my phone connects to its bluetooth or is in range of it or something along those lines

Cheers!

Tumblr HackDay, Final Product

Let me present the open source long-range GSM listening device!

Oh boy… it’s an Arduino, it’s a GSM shield, it’s an amplified mic. It’s soldered, it’s coded - I even added flashy LEDs to show off the fact that it’s doing something. But wait, what’s it do?

Upon receiving power, it automatically connects to a GSM network (I bought a pre-paid SIM card for the hack). Then, it waits.

What’s it waiting for? Audio! It detects voltage changes in the mic (i.e. incoming sound) and once a suitable threshold is met and maintained, it will dial a preset phone number. What number? Tumblr’s Dial-a-Post number ;)

Though the Dial-a-Post feature already has a time limit (30s), I also put a similar time limit in so the call auto-disconnects, just in case. Never can be too paranoid, especially when building a spy tool!

But wait, there’s more! After a recording has been made, it sends an SMS to another preset phone number (mine) to let me know I have some awesome audio to listen to.

If I wish, I can also call the device directly and it will auto-answer. When answering, it mutes its own speaker, so it is purely in “listening mode” when receiving a call. Nice!

But wait, there’s even more! It also accepts SMS messages; if formatted properly, e.g. it has the right commands, it can take predefined actions such as playing midi sounds (a predefined list), or flashing the two LEDs I placed on the board. While nothing special, this is the base of a C&C server that could easily be expanded for other purposes.

Yeah, it’s big. But, it’s also a prototype and well, it works beautifully. I hit my post limit during testing, twice - but I have a hell of a lot of audio around the office from it =P

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