Raspberry Pi’s can be tricky to set up for a smart mirror, especially if you’re not very familiar with them or haven’t used them at all before.

Fortunately, there exists a really simple way to get a smart mirror up and running, within minutes. This is possible by using MagicMirror², a modular, open-source platform for magic mirrors. It is developed by the talented smart mirror maker/developer Michael Teeuw. The repository is available here

Note: This only works for Raspberry Pi 2 or 3, a first generation Pi is not supported.

Step 1: Installing MagicMirror²

On your Raspberry Pi’s terminal, enter the following:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MichMich/MagicMirror/master/installers/raspberry.sh | bash

That’s it! You should now have a magic mirror up and running on your Raspberry Pi. If you run into any problems, check out the full installation guide here, and the wiki here

Step 2: Additional settings for best experience (optional)

Here are some additional settings you can use if your smart mirror project needs them. Just copy/type them into the terminal like before.

Rotate the screen (if you have a portrait oriented mirror):

1. edit /boot/config.txt:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

2. Add the following lines to the config file:

display_rotate=1
avoid_warnings=1 

3. Reboot the Raspberry pi:

sudo reboot

Set the mouse cursor to auto-hide mode:

Install the unclutter utility:

sudo apt-get install unclutter

You should now be good to go. If you run into any troubles, you can comment below or follow the detailed installation guide linked above.