SMART MIRROR
My final-year project became an opportunity to build beyond the syllabus.
01
THE PROBLEM
Getting ready in the morning usually means picking up a phone to check the time, the weather, the news and the day's schedule.
02
THE IDEA
I like taking on new, challenging builds rather than simple ones. For our final-year project I proposed an ordinary mirror that becomes a smart display when someone walks up to it, and a real reason for the team to learn Raspberry Pi and IoT.
03
EXECUTION
Built on a Raspberry Pi with Python and JavaScript, the mirror shows the time, weather, news and schedules, and each user can customise it for their own day, such as the traffic on someone's daily route to work. It takes voice commands through the Google Assistant API, controls smart-home devices, and uses a PIR motion sensor to switch the display on only when someone is in front of it. The hardest part was integrating the voice assistant. As team lead, I taught my teammates Raspberry Pi and IoT basics and took the project from development through to documentation.
Technologies Used
04
OUTCOME
We presented it as our final-year project and earned an S grade, the highest on the scale, and the whole team came away able to work with Raspberry Pi and IoT.
05
LESSONS
“I wanted the project to be technically ambitious, but just as importantly, I wanted the team to grow with it.”