In the world of small computing devices, it seems anything is possible, no more so true in the world of the Raspberry Pi. They can power almost anything, well, as long as the processing requirements are reasonably low. An Interesting project is one by Ben Roe, the Magic Mirror E Ink Project.
Just to clear things up, this isn’t really a magic mirror project, even though the author of the project calls it that. What you have is a device that is more akin to a smart picture frame, but has a low-power, high-contrast E Ink display. The e-ink Magic Mirror can display calendar appointments, weather forecasts, news updates, incoming messages, and other information.
If you were to have a go at building this project, the e-ink Magic Mirror, you shouldn’t have any problems obtaining the components. All you will be looking at less than $100, especially if you’ve already got some of the required “bits” at home.
What you need to get this tech together is a Raspberry Pi Zero W ($10), a 7.5-inch Waveshare E Ink display (Approx $50), a microSD card, and a micro USB power adapter. The screen isn’t anything much to look at, so you might want to find a little picture frame to house it in.
The software under the hood uses the open source MagicMirror2 platform. Ben roe has further tweaked and configured the code so it runs on the black and white E Ink displays. If you are ready to take the plunge, then the code is available on Github, along with instructions for installing all the software. You can also find Information at maker-tutorials if you prefer your Instructions to come with some pretty pictures.
