One great aspect of Engineering is the ability to innovate and create your own products. It goes with the saying, “what you put your mind to, you could build.”
Motivation
Using a Raspberry Pi is a great skill to learn. In a world where microcomputer applications are becoming more prominent, these silent machines that help lower costs on products from Vending machine to IoT appliances.
Recently, I have been developing an interest in the growing Home Automation industry, especially how we could make our home smarter. As an attempt to make my own design. I’ve built a home interface that ties all your smart appliances to a central interface.
I’ve written a post on how to build a touch screen smart Mirror (with Face Recognition) if you would like the full details. All powered from a Raspberry Pi. In this post, I would like to show you how to get started with your first project on a Raspberry Pi.
What is a Smart Mirror?
The term Smart/Magic Mirror is a Raspberry Pi powered with a monitor overlaid on a two-way mirror. A black webpage is displayed with modules you could interact with through your reflection. In this project, some additional features where added e.g., Spotify, Alexa, Touch interface, and Face recognition.
Installing Magic Mirror Package:
The main items you’ll need is a Raspberry Pi, Monitor, and a two-way Mirror additional items are optional, however, it does help with the aesthetics.
Making the mirror touchscreen
The following instructions below would show you how to build one. Once you’ve got your Pi setup, you could build one with the following commands in the terminal.
Run the following commands in terminal
Download and install the latest Node.js version:
sudo apt install -y nodejs
Clone the repository and check out the master branch:
Enter the repository:
Install the application:
Make a copy of the config sample file:
Start the application (Recommended for this setup):
For Server Only use:
Note: You could decrease the MagicMirror size of the font with CTRL + –
You can watch the tutorial on my channel Smartbuilds.io
Conclusion
Raspberry Pi’s are small but powerful machines that have the ability to lower costs in business and projects alike. This project was built to give you an idea of how products, start-ups, and businesses could be built on the back of microcomputers this decade.
