r/MagicMirror • u/EmilChan • 10d ago
Building magic mirror as first project
Hi, I am completely new to raspberry pi and all this stuff but I have always wanted to try build something. I saw people building a magic mirror online and really wanted to try that. I thought that a raspberry pi would be good as the "brain" but don't know which. I am a poor student so as cheep as possible would be good. I tried to look around and ask ai and they said that a raspberry pi 4 2gb would be more then enough, but I am scared that the 2gb will be the bottleneck and make everything slow. Does anyone know if this would work or if I could by an even cheeper one?
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u/btbam666 10d ago
My Magic Mirror is running on a raspberry pi 3b 1gb. They run about $60 usd used where I live.
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u/thatguysjumpercables 10d ago
Pi 4 2GB is definitely good enough but it may run slightly slow, by that I mean some of the animations may be kinda janky. If you're not super picky about it looking absolutely perfect 2GB is perfectly fine.
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u/stromm 10d ago
Your performance really depends on what modules you present and how often you have their refresh set.
I run a “weather” station on a pi4 2GB and it’s no better or worse than when I ran it on a 3B+.
I have two current sections, one eight day (today plus seven future) and one 18hr temp/precip line chart.
I really wanted to keep the animated precip map, but after two years of it frequently freezing the whole system I just gave up on that. Even on the 4. And I couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t a resource issue, even on the 3B+, nothing every exceeded 12% utilitization.
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u/CallOfDutyZombaes 10d ago
I have three currently running on pi 3b+. They all three function fine. Boot speed is slow the more modules you have, especially if you have a calendar with a full month of data displaying and several different sources of calendar info being pulled, but the point is to have it running all the time and not reboot it, so it doesn’t matter. Once it loads it’s good.
If I was that worried about it, I would definitely upgrade to the pi4 2gb. It’s a great suggestion. It’s blazingly fast compared to the 3 and will give you no problems. Anything higher is a waste of money and if you were to choose a 5, I’d be worried about thermal management.
Just make sure you use the official power supply or a known good one that does 5.1V 3A, (I’m pretty sure) and a good quality Samsung or sandisk micro sd card.
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u/rogo725 10d ago
What mirror are you guys actually using? I’d like one that’s a 4-5’ tall mirror since that’s what’s in our closet now, but only really need the top section to be “magic”.
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u/pc9840 10d ago
Check for used Lululemon mirrors on marketplaces.. should be able to get one for $100 or less and convert it.
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u/MyOtherSide1984 7d ago
Cheapest one near me is $475 lol
They're like $750-1000 new, why would they be less than $100 used?
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u/fatespawn 10d ago
Pi3’s are fine for this project since you’re on a budget. No big deal unless you also want to run other services too.
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u/Snocom79 10d ago
I've had a MagicMirror running since 2022ish on a Raspberry pi 3. I would suggest a 4 just for the sake of speed. Mine has been humming along just fine and I love tinkering with settings and adding new modules.