flailed attempts

Failed attempts at the MIRROR

This is about me documenting all my failed attempts at trying to gain control over the MIRROR. As I am writing this, I have not succeeded at all. But, maybe writing this will help capture what I am doing and maybe someone else will take the helm and help out.

What is the MIRROR?

My partner bought the MIRROR, which is an exercise device. This was before Lululemon bought them, before discontinued the sale of it, and before the killed the content. She didn’t use it much (I knew that was going to happen), so now it just hangs there. It weighs 30Kg. It was a nightmare to hang and required a few trips to the hardware store to get the right hammer drill. But now that it’s hanging it does look a nice mirror.

When the mirror is off, it looks like a regular mirror. When it is on, it can show videos of workouts. So it’s basically a mirror with a TV inside it. However, it requires an app to interface with it; so you cannot just stream whatever you want to it.

When my partner stopped using it, it turned into a nice looking mirror that was useless otherwise. It wasn’t broken but obviously wasn’t being taken full advantage of. Like a broken escalator which turns into stairs, the MIRROR just turns into a mirror. I wanted to use it for something else. For what, I still don’t know but I wanted to be able to display whatever I wanted on it.

Start

I obviously started with some googling. Not much would come up, since I don’t think this was a popular product. I found someone who took the MIRROR apart and replaced the internal hardware. I really didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to buy more hardware to make this work. I still don’t, but I might have to give up go this route. They did have pictures of the boards on the inside, but not great quality. I couldn’t make out any of the ICs, however I did see the boards had a JTAG connection, which got me thinking and got me started on my many failures.

The many failures

This isn’t going to be in a great order because I am writing this a bit later than some of the events and two I am thrashing so trying lots of different things without a clear plan.