Smart Mirror Part 2: Running Scripts from Alexa Commands 

Very cool, I hope your switch to Alexa goes smoothly. I wish Google had a similar "run on any platform" solution like Alexa does. If I could use the technique in this video to chrome cast a google music playlist to my sound system I would be very happy.

Totally! I have Philips Hue now actually, and they just work out of the box - no custom scripts required. I think Nest thermostats do too, but you could build your own as well and integrate with this method.

Good suggestion. Raspberry pi even has a super cheap camera add on: www.raspberrypi.org/products/camera-module/ I wonder if hiding a camera behind the two way mirror borders on a bit creepy though... Maybe give it an obnoxiously loud shutter effect.

Great suggestion! I'm actually working on a pi camera project right now, the only missing piece would be sending video stream over wifi...

smart smart smart

Hi Percy, did you get this figured out? I'd suggest sticking to Amazon's FAQs if it's an issue with connecting to the SMS queue. It's possibly the API calls in my post are out of date by now too.

I haven't found a way yet, because the app authorization requires you to login to a web browser. This is something I would really like to figure out though. My solution for now is to never reboot... Turning off in this case is just putting the monitor to sleep.

Yes, obviously the brightness suffers but you can still see colour and everything. You can see a snippet from snow white in daylight here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Z00TOAu3If4.html

Yeah, you could definitely do that. I sort of like the peek behind the curtains at how it all works, but if it was on display somewhere that would be a great change.

Yeah I think it should be pretty possible, I will take a look at the show API info. That would be a great addition.

Full guide is on my blog here - www.cyber-omelette.com/2016/12/smart-mirror.html This video walks through the main steps: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ig9G36-8vJA.html

Hey Johnny, that's actually going to depend on your specific smart light. Philip's Hue has a pretty decent local control API (or at least did when I made this add on: www.cyber-omelette.com/2017/10/haunted-home-automation.html) Otherwise you can try doing some customer smart home setup which has lots of examples if you google, and say you've got an Arduino controlled light, then it's just up to you to track the state. From a high level, I'd say don't expect Alexa to tell you any light values, in this setup she's really just a way to smash a button in the cloud that sets of a chain of events that you control from after the cloud button is hit.

@@BenjaminEagan Thank you for the reply Ben. I already have a working prototype for the light that returns on-off status and other information when I poll it from my computer. What I was wondering is if I can get this information back to Alexa in some way, as well as dim level when I get that portion working on the ESP8266, so I can ask it if the light is on or of, or what the light lever is. The ESP8266 is just an Arduino with WiFi built on to it. I'm definitely working on some custom smart home devices, and will eventually replace my thermostat with one of my own design. I find everything, including Alexa and the Google Nest severely lacking in features I want, and may look into Mycroft in the future to replace them as well.

It's detectable, I wouldn't use it as the only mirror in my house. If you follow the blog links there are some better photos on there.

Ben Eagan OK, thanks!

Hey, thanks for the suggestion, I'm sure that would work too. I just used the tools I'm familiar with, and I've got zero experience with node.js. Would you still use a queue in this case? The 5s is just to keep queue queries in the monthly "free tier", so if node.js uses the same queue then I think you're still facing that delay.

Nope, you're basically constantly waiting for an event to be pushed, so no queue here, it's real time communication. See github.com/socketio/socket.io , their main website is down atm. You can setup a small node.js server on an AWS instance using the free tier.

Nice, that sounds like a great solution (dare I say the "right" solution?)

Feel free to send me a PM if you need help.

I believe if you setup a node.js server on an AWS instance you could easily overflow your "free tier". stackoverflow.com/questions/41040795/how-to-use-socket-io-in-aws-lambda-functions

Interesting, are you suggest two physical displays behind one mirror? Or two mirrors hosted by one Pi?

?both ? I like 2 in 1 mirror for 2 different things . Maybe Alexa show ipcams and maps etc

Yeah, that could work too! If you want Alexa to do the language processing though it's hitting Amazon servers anyway. SQS also lets multiple systems get commands from the same queue which would be handy for home automation with multiple controllers. Plus you don't have to do port forwarding.

Glad to hear it's working well. I can't explain how to install facial recognition, though because I haven't done it! Good luck.

It's running the RPi3 and the delay just hasn't been a problem. I have heard the microphone levels can have a big impact on how responsive it is though, I would check your levels as you talk to make sure the input isn't clipping. Also checkout your "top -u %CPU" to see what CPU is at. Another user was seeing crazy high CPU usage which would definitely hinder performance.

Got it! I checked your blog after reading your reply. I guess the big difference between yours and from what I've seen from others is that you have computing help through Lambda, which I've never heard of before. Thanks for sharing and I hope I can pull this off on my mirror project!

I just want to clarify, Alexa responds very quickly to normal queries like what's the weather, but my custom scripts can take from 1 - 10s . So if you're writing your own skills, there is still some delay.

The mirror quality is going to be worse than the expensive real glass version. It's a product of the glass it's attached too, so a thick sheet of glass in a frame would have less distortion.

Yes it runs on the same pi, only 1 is needed.

Sure do! Check out this video and the links to the blog ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ig9G36-8vJA.html

Thank You that helped a lot! I got the google Ayi hooked up now with Alexa... did you ever try to hook up a pir sensor to that?

Not a pir sensor specifically but it's a pretty simple case of GPIO. You can checkout my plant watering tutorial which reads from a moisture sensor and does "things" and adapt the scripts a bit so that a GPIO signal triggers the on action, and "off" kicks in after a timeout of no motion.

@@BenjaminEagan That seems close to what Im doing. See the problem that I am having is.. I bought google AYI voice kit to go onto the Raspberry Pi to have alexa hooked up to the Smart Mirror. With that being said, All the Gpio pins were used in that process on the Raspberry Pi. I needed 3 GPio pins for the same sensor that You have to work but I dont have any pins left. Not sure what to do.

@@tamir5940 there may be pin extenders for RPi, but you could also buy the Arduino YUN and use the AWS IOT "thing" service. The arduino would publish movement, and the pi would subscribe and take actions. That's a shame though as all you need is one pin!

Love the idea! Definitely possible. Any objections to me trying it out? Probably not anytime soon, but I think the smart mirror visual voice game would be very well received by users.

Yeah, ofcourse! As long as I get to copy the sourcecode.

Absolutely. In fact, when I do get around to it I'll make sure to work in a github repo that you can join in on if interested.

Awesome!

Please do!

If you follow the link to the blog post you can find all materials linked

Can you share the exact error?

No module, this video is about how to build it using scripts and an AWS Lambda function

Hey Gabriel, it's all in my blog posts that can be found here: www.cyber-omelette.com/2016/12/smart-mirror.html

Ben Eagan thanks! I was checking, looks great. Is any way to ask alexa "display movie trailer" and bring to magic mirrow the video? (RU-vid integration or something like that)

You could probably modify this solution to do so, but finding the desired youtube url from the voice command would be the tricky part I think. Good luck!

If you can run it from a command line interface, this could definitely be used for a photo booth experience.

plus: you could name your skill "photo booth" so the user only needs to say "start photo booth"

You definitely don't have to pay, what site is asking for your cc?

Ben Eagan Weel when I first followed this project, I followed this guy’s instructions on RU-vid. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HO326ptdlco.html. That’s his link. I followed everything with the magic me a program and the voice and still nothing works. I get to the point on Google assistant website where I needed a credit card saying that if I use over 500 usages that I’ll be paying like $.15 or something for using their services

Well I can't help you with someone else's tutorial (that is a really good one though), but I'd just stick to the Amazon setup for Raspberry Pi Alexa: developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa-voice-service/set-up-raspberry-pi.html this has always been free so far, so if there is payment required I'd be surprised. Please provide a screenshot of what instructions you're following and what page is asking for money. Note - once you get to writing your own skill like in this video, you do have to provide CC for some of the AWS services you use, but I keep usage within the free tier.

Ben Eagan actually i seen it on the instructions on aiyprojects website as the instructions to get it working

Ben Eagan actually the instructions that you sent me is the best I seen! Thanks! Will this work on the google aiy kit?

Definitely. You'd have to write the code to turn them on and off, but Alexa could be used to trigger that event.

Or you could just use Alexa to control a Sonoff switch connected to the LEDs.

This was about $100-150 Canadian for everything, half of that being the monitor

No! As far as I know, Alexa is the only smart assistant that can be installed on a raspberry pi.

well... alexa is better then nothing, grest idea using that window film!! Going to try and also install homebridge to get some automation goin on with siri and some cheap smart plugs/bulbs

Been meaning to checkout homebridge myself. If all you want is home automation though, the philips hue lights work great with this. Haven't tried anything else.

Not just hue, want to have some smart plugs too, idea is to control tv, let strips, blinds and maybe some sensors, would be cool if i coult tell siri to wake the mirror or maybe add a motion sensor...

Very cool... If you pull it off, please let me know how you do it!

You want the time in India to display on the smart mirror? Yes, that is possible.