I spent the latter part of 2016 on bed rest due to an ACL replacement surgery. Out of sheer boredom, I decided to do something new. Days of scrolling through DIY projects on Pinterest, I was convinced to get started on a project that somewhat resembled "Augmented Reality" in a mirror.
A bit of backstory here. One day coming back from a tuition class, my friend told me about a cool project that he saw somewhere. The project was called "Sixth Sense," created by a guy from India.
As luck would have it, I took Computer Science as my Undergraduate Engineering core even though I always wanted to do Automotive stuff. The thought of replicating "sixth sense" was in the back of my mind, and in the final year, I thought of doing it as the main project. By this time, I had learned the basics in computer science, as using OpenCV and Matlab to do image processing and associated tasks. But my guide advised against taking up such a complicated project - so we decided to make an Android application for encrypting files and called it a day. After college, I straightway started working in an MNC and forgot all about this.
In August of 2016, I injured my leg while playing football and had to undergo an ACL replacement surgery, after which there was a six-month bed rest period. To keep myself occupied while on bed rest, I started looking to do some DIY projects. Endless scrolling through Pinterest to do something similar to "sixth sense" convinced me that "Magic mirror" is a good starting point.
On a fine September evening, I cloned the GitHub repo of MagicMirror and started getting my head around using Nodejs and Javascript! Thanks to a well-documented getting started guide; it took only a couple of hours to get everything installed and running on a windows machine. Once I got to see the UI, I went ahead and ordered a "Raspberry pi 3" and a bunch of sensors(Motion, UltraSonic, Temperature & Humidity) from amazon.
MagicMirror: Creating Custom Modules