When I first saw a picture of a ‘smart mirror’ I didn’t quite understand what I was seeing but I knew I wanted one. They look super sci-fi and I need one ASAP. Smart mirrors seem to be a relatively new trend. There are a few public repositories out there to get your bearings and give you a head start. However, I wanted a smart mirror that does exactly what I want it to do. I explained the concept to Mum and said it sounded pretty cool and would be useful as an assistant in the kitchen, adding “because I get fuck all help from you lot”.
A few obvious features come to mind when you think of a helpful kitchen assistant.
Using an old 4:3 LCD monitor, an old netbook (with a French keyboard layout) and primarily JavaScript I began work on making it happen. I first created my GitHub repo and got to work on the page layout. I blindly followed the UI of the smart mirror pioneers in an effort keep this project more of a weekened thing instead of a month long effort. Maybe I’ll go back and redesign this if Mum actually uses it. Incorporating an awesome JS speech recognition library called Annyang I had voice commands working in no time. I implemented a clock, weather forecast, timer, Google Maps (I don’t really know why) and it’s all viewable in your browser!
I installed Ubuntu on the netbook and set it up to automatically launch Google Chrome pointing to my smart mirror repo on GitHub. Also, I found one-way mirror glass at a local glazier (Metro Glass) in town. It was about $50NZD for the ~30x36cm glass. Yikes.
That’s pretty much what I’m up to. I’m hoping to cut some nice wood for the frame before I put it up in the kitchen. I’ll write another post with photos of the finished project!
Turns out it did take more than a weekend.