We now live in a world where your bathroom mirror can show you the time, temperature, and news headlines as you're brushing your teeth in the morning. Well, one Google staffer can, at least.
In a recent blog post, Google software engineer Max Braun said at some point late last year he realized he wanted his basic bathroom mirror to be smarter — like the one from that 2000 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The 6th Day. After searching online, he couldn't find what he was looking for. So, he built it.
Using a two-way mirror, display panel, controller board, other components, and arts and crafts supplies, Braun rigged up something pretty fantastic. Now, when he's looking at his mug in the morning, Braun can glance over to the right and see the time and date displayed directly on his medicine cabinet mirror or look left for the current weather, a 24-hour forecast, and recent news headlines.
The code behind the user interface leverages some simple Android APIs like TextClock for the date and time, as well as Forecast for the weather and the Associated Press for news. He's also playing around with adding traffic and reminders to the interface.
"The idea is that you don't need to interact with this UI," he wrote. "Instead, it updates automatically and there's an open-ended voice search interface for anything else."
Braun said the project involved "quite a bit of experimentation and some dead ends" and his prototype is still a work in progress. The thing is currently powered by an Amazon Fire TV Stick, which runs an Android API that drives the UI. But Braun also experimented with using Chromecast and Nexus Player before putting together his "finished — yet by no means final" product.
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