Wall Mirror (old)

Nick Hall

About this app

--- Don't use this app, it is outdated but I can't release a new version! Search "Wall Mirror 2" for the updated one. ---

This is a simple app to display useful information on a tablet that is mounted behind a two-way mirror so that the text appears to float on the surface of the mirror. I've had it running in my house for several years and I still love it - it is both a great conversation piece and genuinely useful. The materials cost me about $130. You can see a few pictures from the construction here: https://imgur.com/gallery/DsXyt


The main advantage of this app is a fully configurable UI, so you don't have to be a programmer to use it. Just configure it with your location, the stocks you want to track, your nearest bus/train stop, etc and mount it in a frame. There are many other "smart mirror" type projects out there, search for "magic mirror" or "smart mirror" if this one doesn't suit your fancy, but most of them will require you to do some coding. If you don't mind a little coding, this app is open source (https://github.com/ineptech/mirror) and is free for anyone to use for any purpose.


App Features:
* Time, Day of week
* Birthdays and Holidays (configurable)
* Appointments and reminders from your Google Calendar
* Current temperature and high/low for the day (from forecast.io)
* Stock quotes (from yahoo) (UPDATE: this is broken, due to Yahoo ending their free stock quotes service. I'll fix it when I have time...)
* Time til your bus/train arrives (takes some technical savvy to set up, but no coding required)
* Configurable brightness and font sizes

Recent updates:
* WebModule - loads a brief text message from an arbitrary url
* Ability to use Celsius (can't believe I didn't think of that)
* Bug fix on "Latitude" not saving right

Instructions:
I can't put instructions on configuring the app here because Google will reject the app for keyword spam. Please see the github page (https://github.com/ineptech/mirror) for detailed instructions on building the mirror and configuring the app.

Ratings and reviews

Very buggy, changes made wouldn't save. App constantly would revert back to default settings. For example, followed instructions on weather display section(obtained dev key from dark skies dev) as suggested and entered proper coordinates, wrong info would display. Obtained URL for local bus routes entered in the field provided, no display and wouldn't save and no error message indicator. Very frustrating!

I wish I could give this 0 stars the app is so stupid it just showed a blavk screen and when you press done it sets it as your wallpaper

Umm it was not easy but it was all right so yeah I really don't invite you to do this app but to do another app but I went on there and I didn't know what to do so I keep on asking Google and asking Siri and stuff and Alexa and like I did not know what to do so like they need to make it more accessible for us like to know what we're doing and stuff because I didn't have a clue

What's new

The API this app uses for weather info changed its url from forecast.io to darksky.net. This version uses the new URL. It looks like the you do not have to apply for a new api key, but YMMV.