A fireplace can add a cozy, relaxed atmosphere — and a touch of style — to any home. Redditor [hovee] saw the opportunity to add some flair to his gas fireplace by making it voice activated. Check out the video of it in action below.
Google Home and Google Assistant provides the voice recognition component. A Raspberry Pi 3 with Home Assistant does the legwork. An iTach TCP/IP-to-Contact-Closure relay toggles the fireplace, and an IFTTT account connected to Google Assistant brings it all together.
[hovee] then ran some thick 16/2 wire from the relay network port to the fireplace’s remote receiver circuit to actually turn it on. Some custom code and configuration of the Home Assistant files was necessary, but [hovee] has shown his work, with some tips besides, if you want to throw together a similar setup. It’s a help if your fireplace has a ‘remote’ setting, and a double bonus if there is documentation for the fireplace to be found that will help with the build process.
Once done, all you need to do is kick back with your favorite beverage in the lap of home automated luxury. Just be sure you have a backup to turn off your fireplace just in case your setup goes the way of Skynet. While you’re at it, you can set up your fireplace to save energy as well.
[via /r/homeautomation]
My wife has had a voice activated fireplace for some time now. She just sayes it’s getting a bit cool on here and I get up and get some more wood and put it on ;)
Yeah, but does she get hot when you say, “I’ve got wood”?
I need something like this for my mother in-laws ….. hair!
Can I be “that guy” and opine that doing a bit of contact-bridging surgery on the handheld remote is a heck of a lot easier?
“Google, take out an insurance policy.”
“Google, leave no witnesses.”
LOL!
At this time I have to wonder, does voice activated mean you have to live in a nearly silent world for the “it” to hear you. I listen to a lot of talk radio and music and cannot deal with people who cannot listen to anything in whole without interuptions and diversions. You can’t listen to music in their car, here’s another call… I like voice activated when my hand is on the mic button. Always on opens up the perfect bug-spy. I don’t fear a recording of what is said nearly as much as a spy that translates what I say into plain text and transmits that to whatever so it can search key words etc. So if I have to touch a mic enable, I might as well touch the “fire in the hole” button. Boom!
I hope the whole voice command fad dies quickly. From the first time it was a fad having to listen to the rest of the office “minimize, minimize, run Microsoft Word, maximize”. Now its just as bad but hearing the word siri while they try to get it/her to understand what they want through the rest of the office noise and after multiple attempts of getting it wrong finally pick up their phone and type in what they have been trying to say.
I agree. I’ve used a friend’s iPhone and Siri’s voice recognition is awesome! I think it uses multiple microphones and can isolate my voice.
But, on my Android phone I disable all that spy-crap, saves battery life anyway.
Not a fan of voice recognition at all. I can get up and grab the remote or push a button no problem! ;)
Siri is the opposite of awesome if the all the iphone users around the office are any indication. They are always repeating what they said and she/it still misunderstands.
Could it be modified to produce Morse-code smoke signals?
My first thought was, “Flame on!”
Her response was just as humorous. “Let’s get lit!”
Now I need some remote control Hot Chocolate.