At Build 2016, we demoed a Magic Mirror project powered by a Hosted Web App on Windows 10 IoT Core.

This project builds on the inspiration of projects like Michael Teeuw’s open-source Magic Mirror and Nathan

Patrick’s Smart Mirror, enhancing the concept with a personalized experience that recognizes each user with facial

recognition.

This demo illustrates how Hosted Web Apps in Windows 10 can leverage familiar web technologies to deliver

powerful app experiences to all devices, including the Internet of Things. In this post, we’ll walk you through how

we went about developing the mirror and how to build one for yourself!

What’s a Magic Mirror?

Our magic mirror is basically a one-way mirror (like you might have seen in Hollywood depictions of interrogation

rooms), made “smart” by a simple LCD display which sits behind the mirror and displays white UI elements with a

black background. When the display is on, you can see both your reflection and the white elements, allowing

software to present relevant information while you get ready for the day.

 We designed the Magic Mirror to be low-cost and simple, so anyone could build it in a couple of hours. We’ve

also open-sourced the web app and shared our bill of materials and assembly instructions on our GitHub

repository.

To power the mirror, we chose a Raspberry Pi because of its popularity, price point, support, and hardware specs.

Our web app, which provides the interface and basic functionality, is a simple Hosted Web App that runs on

Windows 10 IoT Core.