I have a few old ipad 2s that are just gathering dust and the only thing wrong with them is that they are no longer supported. I got to thinking about Halloween coming up and If there would be a way to control the start and stop of a video on an Ipad.
The goal would be to make a two way mirror and play a creepy video when someone walks by. The motion sensor to the arduino is simple but I am stuck at how I can control the ipad with an arduino.
If the first and last two seconds of the video is black screen, then the two way mirror would go back to a mirror afterwards.
This is me reaching outside my knowledge zone with arduinos. I just thought it would be a fun project and give some life to an old ipad.
Any other ideas of what to do with old ipad 2s?
It’s tedious work but I took my 2nd gen iPad apart and extracted the LCD. eBay has driver boards that allow you to use the display in my case from the HDMI output from a Raspberry Pi.
Sure. You can buy two way mirror acrylic and replace it with the original mirror, then place an ipad directly behind it and when the ipad is off, you wouldnt even know the ipad was behind it but when it turns on, you can see the screen.
It is how smart mirrors are basically made. I have seen people turn old ipads into a smart bathroom mirror that tells them the weather everyday. This doesnt take an arduino or coding though.
Just make sure you get the model number of the LCD correctly. It matters and there are several changes over the years.
You can find the disassembly instruction on YouTube or iFixit. I cheaped out and used a heat gun and an Xacto knife.
I recommend you take the iPad apart before you order the driver board. You may damage it in the process and you need to get the part number off the sticker on the display.
You may find it’s cheaper to just find a suitable display from one of the Chinese sources but in my case I figured nothing ventured nothing gained.
