So, this project has been a bitch and a half. I want to create a smart mirror, like the ones I’m sure you’ve seen online, that is also an Alexa smart device. I figured that this would pose some challenges but overall pretty easy considering so many people do it and I have just run into all kinds of problems. First off before this I didn’t have a speaker, microphone, or external keyboard so I went out and bought them considering I wanted to build this anyway and could use it for as long as I want. After I got everything the first problem that I was having was with the USB speaker and microphone. For the longest time I was getting an error where I could test the microphone and speaker one time and then if I wanted to use them again it would just say that the device is busy. I had trouble with this for so long I wiped my SD card probably 5 or 6 different times re-downloading the software both from lucas.help and from the raspberry pi website and nothing helped. At one point I considered just making something else just for the interest of this project and working on this later and I actually got OSMC running on my pi and then deleted it because I thought it was too easy and a cop out.
Today I wiped the SD card again, went through the same process I had been, created the .asoundrc file like you see in the picture below and for whatever reason the speaker and mic work completely fine (ignoring the fact that it’s a cheap speaker and mic so the sound quality is carap). After that I continued with the google assistant instillation because I looked up the amazon one and it’s way more confusing and hard and right now I just need to get this done. Got about 4/5 the way through the instillation and came to a bug that I can’t solve. When it comes to the smart mirror the software that I’ve found on GitHub can’t install due to something having to do with electron not being the right version. So, what i posted on canvas is as far as I got. By hell or high water, I will get this assistant and smart mirror working just not before the end of this class because I just don’t have the time between my exams, finishing a large semester long project for another class, and moving out of my apartment. I’ve probably spent collectively 16-20 hours on this trying to debug things and I just can’t spare any more time.
Near the end here I want to say that even though I pretty much failed at accomplishing what I wanted to do I loved this assignment. I’ve been meaning to start making things with raspberry pi for a while now and just haven’t found the time and this class gave the reason to start. I have so many ideas for things that I want to make, some of them generic like the smart mirror, a pi hole, and a retro pi machine. Unfortunately living in my current apartment I don’t have access to my router so I wont be able to do a pi hole for a while but I can do the smart mirror and retro pi soon and use an old Xbox controller that I have. Also I want to strap a pi with a camera onto a drone and run object identification software to do tings like follow cars and possibly fly it over the water and see if it can identify fish or sharks near the coast. I really don’t have any real goal or reason for this other then its cool. This was my favorite project in this class and I wish we could have had more time for it.
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