Turns out that a one-way mirror can hide the cracks of a display behind it. This way a broken device can be repurposed into a smart mirror. Whether that is the best use of the technology may still be debatable¹, but it makes for a cool gadget.

I ordered the mirror online for around €10. For a fancier or more artsy look it could be fun to use a mirror in an irregular shape, or to engrave something on it with a rotary tool. On the other hand, a one-way mirror window film could probably also work and be a little cheaper.

The device behind my mirror is my dad’s old Asus Transformer Book. This computer always felt very futuristic: it had a touchscreen and could be detached from the keyboard. Unfortunately, it didn’t boot anymore and the screen was cracked. Also, the keyboard was gone. I installed Linux Mint on it using a series of incantations that I do not remember anymore (they were pretty much what this forum thread is describing). Without the keyboard I had to connect it to a fairly elaborate collection of dongles, but somehow it all worked out. A much less capable device would also work, as long as it had a screen and could open a web page.

The interface is heavily inspired by MagicMirror, but I rewrote it all so that I could customize it more to my liking. It is just a web page with white text and black background running on a local server - it displays the time and the date, the weather for the week, and live departures from my nearest tram stop. I used Inter Display as the main font.