Short note about wether to use touch displays or not.
If using mirror, touch displays is not going to work. Like Wolfgang says, fingerprints is a huge issue, (ofcouse… It´s a mirror).
Using mirror, you could go for voice control insted of touch. That make sense to me.
Using touch displays can be supplied with voice control as well.
My display (whenever I get to that part) will be a 24" inch monitor without touch, with voice controlled (Google Assistant), build into a frame like sheppard´s first message.
I do have a few concerns for my future monitor build.
Atm I´m running a test using a Rpi3B connected to a 24 inch monitor through HDMI (with resolution 1920 x 1080). It seems to be VERY slow when using habpanel and SVG floorplans. I really dont think the Rpi3B is capable of running this in a fast and smooth way. Using my workstation for the same panel, it´s very fast and smooth. So this is an issue of the Rpi 3B I believe. Maybe an Rpi4 will do. Otherweise I´ll have to find somethig as small as the Rpi but alot faster. (Odroid C2 perhaps).
I´m going for voice control (Google Assistant). I guess the best option would be to build in a Google Home mini into the frame to get the visible led respons as well. Unfortunatly it means that the frame width will be rather big. I havn´t figured this one out yet.
I will try to clean the code as much as possible and upload it to a github repo. But currently it is not that well documented and don’t expect that to happen in the next days. Unfortunately my holidays are over and my spare time besides work, wife and two little kids is rare.
But as I said, I could clean it up probably faster and push it without much additional documentation. The code itself should be readable enough to work with it. At least I hope so.
Thanks for sharing. I’m about to start a similar project also with a big screen. Did you consider using android via emteria.OS? My idea is to have two apps running:
first a full screen browser with MM working with OH via MQTT
the official Sonos app so I can browse and control all the Sonos devices in the house.
The French cleat is how I mounted my magic mirror too! Not sure if I have any photos readily available, but your cable management is much nicer than mine!
One thing I added to my mirror that I love is the Google Assistant API. I’m using it just to parse the voice command and return it as a string. From there I parse the string, and use the OpenHAB rest API to run commands. No touch screen necessary!
I use Alexa the MMM-Alexa-Skill and MMM-Alexa (or maybe the mmm-awesome-Alexa, can’t recall) module. Only because I have 6 x Amazon devices around the house already so keeps it all the same. I also use MMM-Mqtt module for feeding various information I get for OpenHAB, on the mirror too.
Check out Google AIY Voice and Orange Assist for two ways to get Google Assistant on RPis. There are plenty of other options. From personal experience, I can say the microphones in the AIY Voice kit are fantastic. For those who like Alexa, it’s possible to run her on RPi too.
Just an additional suggestion… you might want to try mic arrays such as ones similar to respeaker. They are able to pickup commands better in noisy conditions
Hmm I thought Google AIY was discontinued?
Second, it doesnt provide the four visuel leds which the mini and the home got, right? It may not be that important with the leds, but it´ll be a nice feature to have it.
The original one that required an RPi 3 was discontinued. But they still sell a smaller version that comes with a RPi 0W. Adafruit still has them in stock, I’m sure they can be found elsewhere.
For the leds, you can wire up your own if you want/need that. It has one LED, built into the button, that blinks and pulses to indicate what it’s doing and you can add more LEDs and script them as you will. I added a MAX7219 Display that scrolls what the script is doing.
The thing to realize with the AIY is it’s more like a project kit, not a fully fledged Google Assistant. You are expected to customize it and add to it but it isn’t a full fledged Google Assistant (e.g. you can’t play music or listen to the news through it, it doesn’t appear as a chromecast, etc.) but you can issue commands to OH, ask questions, run GA routines and the sorts of stuff you might want to in a custom display like this.
Lucky’s Orange Assist is a more fully fledged Google Assistant, but I’ve not managed to get it to work yet so I don’t know it’s limitations (if any). I think it can do stuff like play music though and it may even appear as a Chromecast and can be joined to groups. You are also on the hook to buy the microphone array.
I like the idea of having a small unit. I hate you´re display though It wouldnt work in our enviroment. But I get the idea of having such a display for other use… Thats why the rather discrete four leds of the mini/home would be awesome in our enviroment/house…
I´m not sure if I could accept a non-full working Assistant… It´s a bit ackward from my original project, which is based on the Google Assistant connection, and where I used it alot. It would seem as a poor compromise to use then.
The Orange Assistant do sound like a better compromise. I have looked at it a coupple of times, but find it highly complicated when reading the turtorial
I like the idea of having a small unit. I hate you´re display though It wouldnt work in our enviroment. But I get the idea of having such a display for other use… Thats why the rather discrete four leds of the mini/home would be awesome in our enviroment/house…
That display is more to plug a hole than anything. I was putting this into an old cathedral style radio replica (it is actually one from the 1980s, not a classic from the 1940s) but it had a tape deck which means there is this large rectangular hole in the side of the case. I needed something to plug up that hole and this fits the hole almost exactly. The brightness on it is actually way way turned down in practice. I took that picture before I figured out the library fully that drives it.
But the point of that is to show that with the AIY you get events and send events to Google which lets you do things in relation. When it is starting up it says “loading”, when it’s idle it says “ready”, when I’ve woken it up it says “listening” and when it is communicating with OH it says “thinking”. The response from some queries can be displayed there but this is a display on the side so it’s not really meant for that. I kind of dropped the project when I discovered that the AIY couldn’t handle music playback and then we got a chromecast audio and a google hub which further made it less pressing of a project. I may turn it into a juke box or something like that and use the side display to show the audio pulses or currently playing track or something.
On the front of the case though, I have LEDs of various colors to provide more subtle feedback.
The frame will fit an Rpi (or simular), a LCD monitor/screen (Full HD) 24" inch, maybe using a touch screen. And ofcouse the GH mini or something which can operate a full Google Assistant with the leds.
Unfortunatly I can not find any guides on howto duplicate the leds from a google home mini… When I tear down the mini I end up with a slightly smaller device (main board), but it´s still too big to fit the frame.
Alternative is to let the screen go infront of the tear down GH mini main board, but I´m afraid the leds will be too far from the front, and therefore dimmed to show at all. Thats the part I´m trying to figuring out.
All this is still on the drawing board. But it´s the idea I´m working towards.
Seems to me something like Lucky’s Orange Pi and attaching LEDs to the GPIO pins is the way to go. It seems a lot less iffy than tearing apart an actual Google Home and migrating the all the parts around the back of the frame.
I wouldn’t worry about the LEDs dimming with longer wires. Everything I’ve seen that talks about that sort of thing is dealing with meters long wires.
I not sure I know that one. If there is something easier than tearing apart a GH mini, iI would go for it.
The problem is if the screen goes in front, the main board (with the led´s attached), will be pulled back. And the distance of the led to the front of the frame can become a problem. It will maybe require some light pipes or something simular.
The UI looks awesome! Can it be used somehow? Can you share more details about the music tab? How do you trigger the radio and so on? Or, in other words: would be awesome if you share your project
One more question: Did you need to install drivers or something else in order to get the touch functionality working? Or does it work right away?
I use an old iPad 2 so far for displaying HABPanel with some basic info and options. But as it runs 24/7 for some years now, the battery is so bad that it drains even when it’s charging. Therefore I need to look for something different and a RPi with a monitor looks like a good fit.
Nice!
I have EXACTLY the same touch panel working but not installed!
And for months I was pushing aside the day i’ll integrate it to my entrance wall with thousand of ideas but could not figure wish one to use…
And then one day this post appear to me!!!
For the moment I use MXq-4K android box for that touchscreen with the app wallpanel
This app can be controlled by MQTT commands like close display or change url to show but I’ve didn’t tried yet
My only next step now is how to integrate the android box behind the wall recessed display…
but thank you for all your experiments and success. It give me courage to engage project!
Sorry to jump back in on your thread sheppard, but here is an updated rear image of the Magic Mirror. It includes as mentioned my RF to Wifi front door lock, but also something else I added is a 5V LED strip down the 2 x rear sides of the mirror (the actual circuit itself is very simple, just uses a TIP120 transistor and small 220ohm resistor, to control the LED lights via GPIO pin 25 on the RPi) The idea was to use the configuration option in AlexaPi for MagicMirror that when talking to Alexa the LEDs light up when she listens (records), but to me that’s a little boring so instead I simply want the option to control the MM LEDs via OpenHAB instead (and therefore, with the switchable option in OH, also be able to talk to Alexa that’s running in the MM and ask her to turn the LEDs on or off instead) As a quick test, I wrote a small python script to simply turn GPIO pin 25 on or off (therefore turning the LED light on or off) which works fine. The next part is interaction between RPi GPIO pin (eg: executing the python script) and OpenHAB - in this case, MQTT seems the obvious choice (in that MQTT “app” subs to LED topic, and OH switch publishes ON or OFF, which MQTT “app” on RPi then executes python script to turn LED ON or OFF)
I did a search and saw jpmens MQTT-launcher on github which basically is a python script that runs/loops, subs to preconfigured MQTT topics, listens for incoming messages that get published to those topics, then performs certain actions based on the value of the payload. So, before I run with this, I’m throwing it out there to see if anyone else has used a different method to perform a certain action on a Raspberry Pi, via any alternate software that is simple to setup, or has more functionality etc? Any suggestions?
It wouldnt work in our enviroment. But I get the idea of having such a display for other use… Thats why the rather discrete four leds of the mini/home would be awesome in our enviroment/house…
