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Comment by lazaroclapp | Hacker News Reader

Does the device's camera work from behind the one-way-mirror? Specifically, does the device camera work well enough from behind the one-way-mirror to do accurate face recognition? (the idea being that it can display different information for different users and have at least a soft "biometric" privacy lock).

Also, would color images be displayable through the one-way mirror or only white will make it intact?

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Color works quite well, the white was purely an aesthetic choice.

I haven't tried out the camera, but hypothetically should work.

I've been wanting to take on this project with a window since I saw it in Iron Man. Congrats on actually getting something off the ground!

This would be rather creepy if we're talking about a bathroom mirror.

You could very easily etch off just the silvering directly above the camera even if the mirror did prove to be a problem. The front fascia on smartphones (which are not transparent) already have an analogous cut-out for the front-facing camera.

So yeah, facial recognition to display per-person customized information is definitely possible, and would be awesome.

If the camera works well, real-time biometrics are definitely a possibility:

https://github.com/thearn/webcam-pulse-detector

I believe the device is on the side that you only see your own reflection, but I could be entirely wrong. I base my assumption on the premise you can see the contents of the tablet from your side.

As I understand it, one-way mirrors let light pass in both directions. To be used as a "one-way" mirror it relies on the light differential between the two sides. Namely, it will always look like a mirror to the brighter side and like a window from the darker side into the brighter side. So, technically, the "mirror" side is facing you wherever the screen is dark on the other side. When the screen is bright, then the mirror works as a window. The problem is that I am not sure how bright is bright, i.e. would a normal color photograph, displayed against the mirror panel from the other side, be too dark to be seen through?

Also, I am not sure of is if it distorts the image in some way to have the mirror panel in between the device's camera and the outside.

Two way mirrors can actually be seen through both sides given the right lighting. Here is more information from MentalFloss https://youtu.be/XKuF1eT1Cqc Given that, I am sure the camera could see out, which in a bathroom could be a much creepier feature than if it couldn't.

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