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?
Unfortunately I haven’t managed yet to upload it in a useable way. Still need to remove my config and I’m also facing other issues like that I have to remove the icons. They are free for use but can’t be shared in a github project. :-/
So currently I have not found the time to deal with this, since I’m quite busy at the moment.
I thought about having a metal box manufactured but decided against because of the costs. Currently I just mounted a wooden board in the back where I then mounted the PI, socket, cables …
since everything is hidden behind the monitor/frame anyway, I don’t care that much anymore.
Unfortunately, I still haven’t had the time to clean up the code and remove e.g. the icons. At the moment I’m again busy with work and use the spare time for my family. I will see, if I can manage something in the next weeks. But I can’t promise anything atm.
Hello,
great project! It has motivate myself to buy the Asus Touchscreen as well. I installed FullPageOS on Rasp. Pi 4 to run my OH Habpanel.
To make the system now smarter I would like to control the monitor by events (time, presence, motion detection, …) as Sheppard doing as well controlling the displayed screens (if I open the door => the screen with open windows will be shown, of if some motion will detected the screen with the camera opens).
How I can control the on/off via MQTT? By an additional switch (e. g. Sonoff plug)? Or is there a smarter opportunity to control it directly by the Rasp. with the FullPageOS?
Same Q. regarding the Rasp with FullPageOS: How can it bring to sleep mode and how to wake up?
And last but not least: Are different views/displayed (pages) possible to control by special events?
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…
