Glass vs Reflective Film Smart Mirror Showdown

After upgrading my Smart Mirror from a reflective film mirror to a glass two way mirror, I thought it would be interesting to attempt a (semi) scientific comparison between the two types of mirror.

This test involves taking a bunch of pictures and rating the mirrors on a few categories. I decided to focus on transmission, reflection, and simplicity when evaluating each solution.

You can also checkout my album of comparison photos here to draw your own conclusions!

Laser Cut Cutlery Drawer

I recently joined Toronto's SteamLabs, and got access to a laser cutter for the first time. Laser cutters are incredible machines which use a freakin' laser to carve or etch patterns into flat materials like wood or plastic. They are fast too!

Over the past few years of 3D printing, I have learned that often some of the best uses for these amazing tools are to take something really mundane and just make it easier to make. For example, one of my most useful 3D prints was some "S" shaped hooks to hang Christmas tree ornaments. Within about 20 minutes, we had enough for all the ornaments we could hang.

Well, my laser cutting got off to a start with a similarly thrilling project. A cutlery drawer! It's pretty straightforward, but since it has proved to be so easy and useful, I decided to share it in case anyone else needs a custom drawer organizer.

Here's how it went down.

Fire From Water

This is a project I've had on the backburner for almost exactly 1 calendar year. The seed was planted when I toured the Harry Potter Studios last year and saw a fake fireplace effect being used quite extensively. I am also an avid watcher of the "Fireplace for your Home" Netflix channel, so I eventually realized I needed one of these imitation fires of my own. So here we are now!

Take a look at what I put together, and if that curiosity is still burning keep reading for instructions to reproduce this project yourself.

The All-Seeing Pi

This post is a about vision enhancement platform called The All-Seeing Pi that I have been working on with my friend Dan, who is blind. People who are blind rarely have no vision at all though, and in Dan's case, he still has a little bit of sight in one eye. He's also the first to tell you how much technology can do to enable mobility.

From these discussions, we came up with the idea for a video feed connected to a display, with a wearable screen in the ideal spot for maximum vision. This allows someone to focus on just the screen, and let the camera capture the detail and depth of the environment.

In the end, the prototype served as a successful proof of concept. Checkout the video above for a field test and some more discussion! Dan also likes to push the limits of what can be done with his disability, which he chronicles at his blog Three Points of Contact.

In the rest of this post, I'll be talking about how to build the device. This may be useful if you or a friend have a similar condition, but it is also a great starting platform for a Raspberry Pi based augmented reality rig. The general setup is a raspberry pi with a camera module running on an HDMI (not SPI!) small display. The video feed is provided via OpenCV and RaspiCam, with code and install details below.

Launch a Script Using Alexa Voice Commands

In a previous post, I showed how you can build a smart mirror with an Alexa voice assistant on board. The MagicMirror software and Alexa voice assistant were both hosted on a Raspberry Pi, but unfortunately there was no obvious way to get Alexa to control the smart mirror, or deliver commands to the Raspberry Pi.

I have now found a solution that is free, reliable, and very flexible. This is done by writing an Alexa Skill that adds a message to a cloud hosted queue based on your voice command. The Raspberry Pi repeatedly checks this queue for new messages, and runs customizable behaviour based on message contents. This is not limited to smart mirror applications, or Raspberry Pis. It can be used to launch any script you want on any platform that will connect to Amazon's SQS.

Here is a demonstration, and high level overview of how it works:

and a follow up demonstrating an extension of this idea:

In this tutorial I will focus on just using this to simply turn the smart mirror on and off. Adding your own scripts should then be fairly straight forward,

The steps will be as follows:

1. Create a Queue using the Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
2. Write some python code to read and write to this queue
3. Write a Lambda Function that posts messages to the queue
4. Write an Alexa Skill that calls the Lambda Function
5. Schedule a task on your Raspberry Pi to read queue messages and take appropriate action.

DIY Selfie Stick

This is a fun and very easy project I came up with while trying to build a wireless shutter for an iPhone. I knew selfie sticks could trigger your camera shutter, so I was trying to find out what information they were sending through the 3.5mm aux port (aka headphone plug) to do this.

In this process I learned that headphone volume buttons will also trigger the camera shutter!

So I plugged in some headphones with volume control, and tried to come up with a way to attach my phone to a stick. I came up with the spatula sponge elastic combo you'll see here.

Take a look for yourselves!

DIY Smart Mirror ft. Alexa

Materials

1. Computer Monitor. Buy used and look for cable inputs that point down or sideways instead of straight out. 22" recommended (I used Acer AL2216 )
2. Video cable. Whatever fits your monitor (I used HDMI to DVI adapter)
3. Raspberry Pi 3, 16GB Micro SD Card, 5V Micro USB power supply, any RPi case
4. Wood. I bought four 3ft lengths of 3"x1"
5. 8 Angle brackets
6. Short wood screws.
7. Gorilla glue.
8. Electrical tape.
9. Extension Cord with multiple plugs.
10. 50cm x 70cm Ikea STROMBY frame.
11. Gila Mirrored Window Film 
12. USB Sound Card, Lapel Mic, any USB powered speaker *

*Bonus Alexa Materials

Additional required tools/supplies are: scotch tape, a squirt bottle, dish soap, a drill or screwdriver, exacto knife, scissors, and a saw.

March 10, 2018 update: I'm currently in the process of trying out an actual two way mirror as well instead of the window film. If you're interested in this I can recommend this mirror which comes in several sizes. I'll have a post coming soon with instructions for how to mount it.

Creating the Two Way Mirror

The two way mirror is the most essential part of this build. To create this component, you just apply Gila Mirrored Window Film to any piece of glass or acrylic. This works equally well for glass and acrylic, and only takes about 15 minutes.

From the Vault: PICHEC Raspberry Pi Cluster

I want to document this project, as it is one of my favourite projects to date. This took place about 4 years ago while I was working at the Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC).

One of ICHEC's projects at the time was creating demonstration for the BT Young Scientist Exhibition to explain the use of parallel computing. I volunteered to build a Raspberry Pi cluster for this, along with a parallel demo application called Conway's Game of Life. The (very old) code can be found here, and more details about the simulation can be found in the official handout.

The best part of the project was building the cluster. My design placed the 8 Raspberry Pi's into the legs of a plexiglass enclosure shaped like the pi symbol. I also wrapped ethernet cables in colour electrical tape to give them distinct colours, and added several strands of EL Wire to make it glow.

Here are a couple of photos of the cluster and build process.

Glorious PICHEC

DIY Alexa Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant

Amazon did something really cool. They made their Alexa voice assistant code open source and cross platform. That means instead of buying their Amazon Echo to get a home assistant, you can simply install it on any system you want.

It's actually a fairly straightforward project, especially if you've setup a Raspberry Pi before (or eight #fromthevault)! Basically you're just installing an application, and setting up a microphone and speaker. Nothing fancy.

There are already some great guides for getting started too for both Raspberry Pi and Alexa. I'm just going to direct you to these, give a rough overview, and add some additional tips.

Here it is in action:

Shopping List

For equipment, you'll need:

1. A Raspberry Pi 3 with SD card and USB micro power source:

• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Starter Kit

From the Vault: Arduino Night Writer.

Night Writer

About four years ago, I invited some friends over to try to turn a remote control car into something programmable. We had some trouble finding supplies though, so they just brought beer instead. But we were determined to build something.

I had recently seen this video, and thought we might be able to reproduce it with just a column of LEDs and a long exposure photo.

This project uses the "Persistence of Vision" concept, where the LEDs flash vertical slices of a letter or symbol, and you provide the horizontal movement. Using a long exposure camera allows you to slowly "paint" the light into your image.

First I'll show you some photos from the project. If you want to build your own, keep scrolling for rough build details. As it's "from the vault", it's not a complete walkthrough. It does give you the code you need though, and a photo of the circuit. This would be a good 2nd or 3rd Arduino project.

Results

HPC 4 Life

Astrophotography Manual Barn Door Tracker

Motivation

After seeing some beautiful photos of the milky way, I wanted to step up my astrophotography game a little bit. In astrophotography, you are limited to shutter speed = 500 / (focal length) before your stars get blurry from the earth's rotation. To get better photos of the night sky, you can use what is called a tracker which allows you to take much longer exposures.

They are also quite expensive, and not particularly complicated. So I decided to try making one myself. The goal was to make it simple, and cheap. In the end, the total was less than $50, and the results have been quite successful.

It was so simple to build in fact, you probably don't even need a guide once you understand the key concepts. So I'll start with the basics of how and why it works, followed by a breakdown of how I built it.

Here is the final product:

and some results:

2.5 minute Milky Way exposure

Vice City: Python Automated Sports Betting

Automated Sports Betting

Everyone knows gambling is a great way to make money (/s). I myself formed this conclusion after hearing bookies will sometimes pay out before an event even happens, which planted a betting strategy in my mind that required a bot. This very successfully and slowly lost me my $50 investment, but I had a lot of fun making it, so I thought I would share the project.

If you use this guide, please don't be stupid. Basically nobody comes out on top in the sports betting world. It's not going to be you! So maybe have some fun testing out theories, or let a robot lose money on your favourite sports team, but be prepared to lose any money you deposit in your Pinnacle account.

This is my first tutorial, so if you use this project I'd love to hear how it goes. If you manage to make a lot of money, a donation to Wikipedia would be appreciated.

Now let's get down to the coding. Taking a look at the official API documentation  at this point would be wise as well. All the source code referenced can be found at my github here, along with any future bug fixes. An intro to python can be found here.

In my bot, there are three essential stages.

1. Gather information. (Balance, Odds)
2. Check Criteria. (Find desirable bets)
3. Place bet.