
My Voice Controlled Smart Mirror: A Postmortem - Uehreka
https://chrisuehlinger.com/blog/2016/08/20/voice-controlled-smart-mirror/
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SEJeff
A bit surprised no one mentioned the (quite large) open source project one of
the first Magic Mirror developers created and it is really good:

[https://magicmirror.builders/](https://magicmirror.builders/)

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Uehreka
After I built this, I discovered a bunch of these things. I hadn't seen that
one, it looks really neat! One of the benefits of my approach (for me) was
that I already had an Echo and a Kindle Fire (that I wasn't using). If you
have a bunch of tech lying around, this approach can be more cost effective
than buying a big screen.

~~~
SEJeff
Oh totally not knocking your project, this was a fantastic writeup! Thanks for
doing it! I was just a bit surprised that no one else in this thread mentioned
that one as it has been around for awhile and is relatively well established
in "home automation" circles that I tend to frequent.

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bakhy
i understand i'm nitpicking, but maybe someone should tell the author what
"mortem" means? i was expecting something dead, a failure story. pick another
worn out phrase ;)

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georgehotelling
I've seen "postmortem" used frequently for project wrap-up meetings. I try to
suggest "postpartum" as an alternative.

Occasionally I've been shot down because "postpartum" is linked to postpartum
depression, and so it's not a very positive term to use. Instead we keep using
the apparently more-positive "postmortem".

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AtheistOfFail
Because death is so much more positive when you're talking about development.

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spacemanmatt
Same

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adrianN
Is there any free-software voice recognition that one could use in case one
doesn't trust the Amazon Echo not to send everything you say to the NSA?

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Taylor_OD
I didnt want to get a echo because of this. One of my friends pointed out that
I have no issue carrying around a cell phone with a mic and camera that can
and likely is used for exactly this. Now I have an echo and I can turn on
nature sounds at night without having to get up and go to my computer.

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vollmond
Yeah. I'm pretty paranoid, but I already have Google Now, Siri, and Cortana in
my house via phones and laptops, so bringing in Alexa really isn't much of a
stretch.

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stormbrew
If you're really paranoid but need to have at least one of these things, you
could make a reasonable argument that using as many of them as possible will
increase the size of conspiracy necessary for certain types of attacks against
you (eg. wrongful conviction).

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semi-extrinsic
I'm not a web dev, just "know enough to be dangerous", so I have to ask: the
functionality that we see is just browsing HN, but he mentions using the API
to fetch data and that this is cumbersome. Why not just do simple wget calls
(or equivalent)?

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Uehreka
So that approach would be called "web scraping", and was the only way to build
HN-based apps and sites before they gave us an API. Many apps still do this.

The API is a little cumbersome (it's totally RESTful, which means you
sometimes have to make tons of HTTP requests to get enough data for a
particular view), but it's much more reliable. I don't have to worry that HN
might change the structure of their markup and break my app.

(Bear in mind, that's not HN's markup on the page, it's new markup that I
wrote using the data from HN's API.)

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nattaylor
I love the "cool" factor of this; it just looks cool.

Chris's addition of voice controls is equally cool.

The appeal to average people is cool; the hacking together of so many tools is
cool.

I'm curious where stuff like this heads...

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netsharc
At first sight, yes, but do we really need to be able to read Hacker News on
(voice) command? Or even the weather for that matter. To me it feels like a
"We were promised flying cars and we got 140 characters" kind of future.

~~~
melling
Yeah, I know what you mean. I like to rip people who actually build real stuff
from behind the glow of my computer. Why can't they simply build Jarvis and be
done with it? I could do that if I wanted to.

Do I need to explain sarcasm? Probably.

Anyway, the challenge is to do better, not to criticize.

~~~
NickBusey
So unless we feel motivated to construct a 'better' smart mirror, we're not
able to point out that we think the very idea is silly? I mean, I appreciate
the effort, and it's really a cool build, but rather pointless in the end. Is
that not a valid point of discussion?

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melling
Don't limit your imagination to a mirror.

The OP wanted to build and learn. Might be kid's stuff or pointless to you. He
shipped his version 1.0. That's more than most.

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vvanders
Nice! When I posted my comment yesterday I wasn't expecting to see it on a
mirror!

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boxcardavin
I'm always fascinated by people's fascination with smart mirrors. I don't get
it myself, but I like their enthusiasm.

~~~
NickBusey
Yea I spend, on average, maybe 5 seconds tops looking at myself in the mirror
every day. Why would you build so much functionality into a display that only
exists in one, usually very humid sometimes smelly room, and the only way to
interact with it is to stand there shouting into the steamy air?

~~~
Uehreka
Check out the video in the post: I have the mirror in my bedroom, within view
of my bed and my reading chair. And even if I only interact with it a couple
times per day, I find it pretty useful.

I certainly wouldn't recommend putting this in a bathroom :) Some part of the
system would eventually get water damage and Alexa would make more mistakes
listening over fan/shower/faucet noise.

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dweinus
Is the screen always on, or does it wake up on command? If so, how? If not,
does it produce visible light in the room when not displaying?

Amazing result, well done & thank you for sharing!

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Uehreka
It's always on. This means that when the lights are out, there's a faint black
rectangle (with the time in the upper right corner) shining on my wall. It was
a little annoying at first, but now I don't notice it. It doesn't keep me from
falling asleep.

I couldn't find an API in Fire OS to change the user's screen brightness, and
I don't know that one exists. I'd love to have it be brighter during the day
to compete better with sunlight, but alas.

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ineptech
Never used FireOS, but I assume you'd just use the Android windowsmanager.
Code (from my smart mirror, which I posted here a year ago and no one cared)
here, line 190:
[https://github.com/ineptech/mirror/blob/master/src/com/inept...](https://github.com/ineptech/mirror/blob/master/src/com/ineptech/magicmirror/BrightnessController.java)

