Not-So-Smart-But-Very-Wholesome-Yet-Slightly-Creepy Mirror

In need of a mirror but not willing to add yet another smart object to your home? Then this Not-So-Smart-But-Very-Wholesome-Yet-Slightly-Creepy Mirror is just right for you!

Supplies

Mirror
Raspberry Pi
Infrared motion sensor
USB speaker
Hot Glue Gun

Step 1: Project Video

Step 2: Mirror

The first step to making this mirror is, you've guessed it, finding, buying or creating a mirror. We still had a bucket of mirrored mosaic tiles, so we used those to create a head-sized mirror inside an old wooden tray.

To lay and grout the mosaic, we followed the steps outlined in this Instructable “How To Make A Mosaic For Beginners”.

Honestly, it's not as scary or as complicated as it looks, we would definitely recommend it!

Step 3: Mirror Decorations

Once you have a mirror, it's time to add some nerdy decorations. We 3D modelled and printed the HTML < head > and </ head > tags to add to the top and bottom of the mirror, to make it very clear that what you can see in the mirror is your head. You can find the 3D models of all the individual letters added here!

Hot glue the 3D printed stuff to your mirror to make it permanently awesome!

Step 4: Hardware & Code

Now that the mirror is all done, let's move on the the hardware and code.

The idea is that the mirror will give you wholesome compliments when you stand in front of it or when you walk past. To do this, we'll be using a Raspberry Pi 3, an infrared motion sensor and a USB speaker.

To detect motion with the infrared motion sensor, we followed this Raspberry Pi tutorial.

For the speech, we used the TTSMP3 website, which is a free text-to-speech and text-to-mp3 website.

We chose for a lovely, soothing voice (US English Salli) and made her whisper using the functionalities on the website. So, gather some inspiration and generate a number of wholesome quotes for your mirror to say, and download them as individual mp3 files.

Next is piecing all the code together. In short, the motion sensor will detect someone in front of the mirror. When that happens, a random audio file is chosen and played via the USB speaker. The python code to do all of this, is attached right here.

Last but not least, attach all the hardware to the mirror. We used our favourite yet temporary solution: duct-tape. If you're looking for something more permanent, you can screw and glue all the elements in place.