James Coleman
Tech Turtle
Raspberry Pi Resurrection: Stage 110/15/2017 This is going to be the first of a series, called “Tech Resurrection”. Essentially this series is something to get me going back to old projects and really get them going again while showing you guys the basics of the project if you want to try it out. Now for this first season? Series? Project? (I don't know, let me know in the comments if there's something I should really call it) I’m going to be bringing back an older project from my IB personal project, a raspberry pi web based mirror kiosk, or magic mirror for short. Sadly I've lost the few photos of my own functioning one however the goal is to create something similar to the photo below. This image here is part of the blog linked below that gives a more in depth instruction as to building the frame and mirror portions of the project. The first stage here is just going to be getting hardware set up and running again. Since the photo above, I have disassembled all of the connecting tech from the raspberry pi to the cables and taken the monitor out of the frame. If you're interested in doing this yourself here’s a great tutorial that gives every detail on how it all works and a way to build it yourself and the source of the image above. http://blog.dylanjpierce.com/raspberrypi/magicmirror/tutorial/2015/12/27/build-a-magic-mirror.html Essentially the “magic mirror” is a two way mirror with monitor behind it. By projecting a black webpage with white text features, it allows you to see your reflection in the black and read the brighter white text through the mirror. While the tutorial above is pretty awesome, I took some did creative liberties on the project and opted for some separate materials based on the monitor I had gotten for it and some options to make it a little easier in an at home setting. Firstly it doesn't matter what type of frame or wood you use for the frame. Personally I used 2x4s because they were cheap, plentiful, and sturdy enough to secure the old and heavy monitor into (note that this will make it weigh a lot more compared to thinner or less dense framing). The process of making this was fairly simple. Just take the monitor out of its casing cut 2x4s to the length around it and then screw them together while the monitor is in between to ensure a proper fit. From there you can craft whatever front framing you want to hold the monitor into the frame and secure the back as well with some hinges or what ever else you can find. If you look closely you can see the small metal brackets I screwed into mine. Once that's done you get start putting it together… or in my case back together. The first thing for this is to ensure that the raspberry pi is running and updated before installing it into the kiosk frame… lets just say I learned my lesson last time. From there you can start the physical installation. Start with the Pi, making sure to use tape to keep it in place. Then the signal converter along with the vga cable. The converter may not be mentioned in the blog linked earlier as I opted to save some money on the monitor which meant that it only has a vga input. Then finally connect power cords. For this I suggest using a usb splitter and wall plug as you can power both the converter and rasp pi from usb. I also used a small power strip to help keep more of the cables in the mirror its self rather than running two power cables out of the mirror. If all goes well you’ll be greeted with the raspberry pi boot screen. YAY step one done. After this things start to get a little more messy as the popular tutorials all use a chromium extension to support the coding, which last I checked was no longer supported for Raspberry pi but we’ll get into that next time. For now you can just marvel at this beautiful, hunky mirror based kiosk.
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Introduction10/3/2017 Welcome to my blog! Tech Turtle is a tech focused blog with a value on making and custom builds. I plan to be posting twice a month with at least one project per month. My first month here may just show off a premade project with some instructional reflection as I try to get this blog set up and running smoothly and that in its own is its own challenge. Hope to see you again soon!
-T.T Drew ArchivesCategories
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