Smart mirrors have always had that futuristic feel about them. They just ooze cool because it isn’t just a screen or just a mirror, it’s more. It’s a screerror. Okay maybe we need to work on the name, but I digress.
Anyway, this kind of tech has always been left to the tinkerers of society. Those who just a have a knack, either from some kind of training or natural born talent, for making cool things work. That said, of all the DIY smart mirrors that I’ve seen, this one easily looks the coolest.
So thin, in fact, that he can still use the shelf compartment behind it to store his toiletry needs. If you peel back the panel, it looks a little less elegant, but if we’re rating his cable management out of 5 stars, I think he deserves, at least, a passing 2.5 stars.
It runs on an Android API via an Amazon Fire TV Stick that is plugged into what Braun says is a “board from China” that can convert anything “in the universe” to a 40 pin display cable.
The UI is equally sleek, with the skinny and minimalistic font plus generous white spacing (mirror spacing?). For now the mirror has a Forecast weather widget and an Associated Press RSS feed plus a clock. Braun says it’s incomplete though and is currently playing with concepts like traffic, reminders and basically anything that has a Google Now card.
He says that the idea is users don’t have to interact with this UI, and it updates automatically. For anything else, it’s got an open-ended voice search interface.
Super cool. If you’d like to find out more about how he did it or build one for yourself, you can head on over to his post on Medium.
For everyone else who lacks the technical skill to build one of these themselves, join me in a plea to get Google to put this or something like this, into production. PLEASE.
