This Guy Built His Own Smart Bathroom Mirror
You can see news, the weather, and the time -- all while flossing.
Tired of waiting for the corporations to deliver on dystopian science fiction’s promise of a golden age of smart bathroom fixtures, Google software designer Max Braun decided to build his own 21st century looking glass.
Putting the device together using a normal two-way mirror, display panel, and controller board, Braun’s final product mimics a smartphone display. You can see news, the weather, and the time … all while flossing. He designed the text and icons to be monochrome so they’re less distracting.
You'll never not have to be distracted with this smart mirror.
In a post on his design at Medium, Braun writes that he used Android software for the “by no means final” result:
The code behind this UI uses some simple Android APIs (e.g. this one is neat) plus Forecast for the weather and the Associated Press for news.
Other concepts I’m playing with are traffic, reminders, and essentially anything that has a Google Now card. The idea is that you don’t need to interact with this UI. Instead, it updates automatically and there’s an open-ended voice search interface for anything else.
Like so many great ideas before it, the smart mirror is an invention whose time has come. Take this smart mirror design from Dylan Pierce, a Philadelphia web designer who used some of his expertise to build a better reflector for his girlfriend’s Christmas present.
Pierce built his by gutting a monitor that runs on a simple computer, then putting the guts behind a two-way mirror. And Braun isn’t even the first to use an Android software as a base. We are ready to truly take our beds and baths … beyond.
