Say Hello to the Smart Mirror Powered by Arduino UNO Q

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what sort of project should you spend next weekend building? How about a smart mirror that shows you the time, a calendar, your to-do list, room temperature and humidity, and a weather forecast? Looking into it will help you get ready for the day as you go through your normal morning routine. And if you follow the guide recently published by Kamitronix, you can have one so fast that it will seem like magic.

The smart mirror is powered by an Arduino UNO Q 4GB board. It is connected to a 17.3-inch, 1920×1080 IPS display panel that is hidden behind a sheet of two-way mirror glass. A Modulino Thermo breakout board was wired into the circuit to capture environmental data from its onboard sensor.

Unlike a traditional microcontroller board, the UNO Q combines a Qualcomm MPU running Linux with an STM32 microcontroller on the same platform. In this project, the STM32 handles direct sensor interfacing duties, while the Linux side takes care of heavier workloads like serving the graphical interface, processing camera feeds, and maintaining the InfluxDB database behind the scenes.

The software stack relies on Arduino App Lab and its containerized “Bricks,” which provide preconfigured services. The WebUI Brick serves the HTML dashboard and maintains a WebSocket connection with the browser. A Time Series Brick stores environmental data, while a Video Object Detection Brick continuously analyzes a USB camera feed using a pretrained AI model.

When the system detects a person (or cat), the mirror displays a temporary on-screen greeting overlay identifying what the AI saw. The detection pipeline includes adjustable confidence thresholds and debounce timers to reduce false positives and repeated triggers.

The guide walks through mounting the display behind mirror glass inside a deep picture frame or shadow box, routing cables through ventilation holes, and securing the controller boards with brackets and hot glue. A USB-C hub ties the system together, handling power delivery and HDMI output.

Planned upgrades include live weather integration through Open-Meteo, text-to-speech announcements, and a fully 3D-printed rear enclosure to hide the electronics. If you’d like to build your own smart mirror, be sure to check out the project’s full documentation.