Fireside romance at your command
Redditor Hovee has a sense of romance firmly cemented in 1975. With a Google Home device, a Raspberry Pi, a gas fire and the pants-removing tones of Marvin Gaye, he’s rigged up his sitting room for seduction.
The setup does not yet open a box of chocolates and a bottle of red wine, or unfurl a rug made out of something fluffy and dead, but we’re sure that with some iteration it’ll start doing just that.
Whats going on here? Hovee’s Google Voice is talking to the Raspberry Pi, which has Google’s Home Assistant installed on it. The fireplace (which is some newfangled thing that does things my fireplace doesn’t) has three positions: on, off and remote control. By switching the fireplace to remote and adding a switch (a nice long way away from the hot fire), the Pi can control both the flames and the music. Hovee has documented what he’s done on Reddit.
It was felt by most people at Pi Towers that it would be inappropriate to illustrate this post with that picture of Burt Reynolds on a bearskin rug, however well it captures the mood, so we’ve edited it slightly for delicate sensibilities.
We like projects that involve setting things on fire. Got your own? Drop us a line and you might see it featured here.
12 comments
Alex Bate
Since joining Pi Towers, this is definitely the most interesting task I’ve been asked to complete. I now await the therapy sessions Liz promised me.
Russell Davis
there isn’t enough therapy in the world. I suggest just accepting that fact & asking for an alcohol & chocolate budget for your job title
Swiss Tony
Programming a Raspberry PI is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman…. declare your variables, check your code, then schedule the job
The 13th Duke of Wybourne
me, The 13th Duke of Wybourne, with a Raspberry Pi, an automated fireplace and my collection of Barry White on MP3. What were they thinking of?
John
I thought this was a family blog?
Mandy Daniels
I think the ink fumes have finally got to Inky Liz! That and maybe (just, maybe) the pic of Burt! ;)
Liz Upton
No apologies will be forthcoming. It’s a picture for the ages.
Jim Manley
How, exactly, do you think families come about, anyway? Ho-ho-HO!!!
Brad
I think there should be a small correction to the article.
“Hovee’s Google Voice is talking to the Raspberry Pi, which has Google’s Home Assistant installed on it.”
should actually read
“Hovee’s Google Home is talking to the Raspberry Pi, which has Home Assistant installed on it.”
Google is not associated with the Home Assistant project.
And even more correct would be “Hovee’s Google Home is talking to IFTTT which is talking to the Raspberry Pi, which has Home Assistant installed on it.”
Alex Ellis
Very neat. I’ve done something similar with Amazon’s Alexa Echo Dot with the Blinkt and Envirophat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY7jueCdBg8&list=PLlIapFDp305CPJ3dKNb_mh0vqMz865oXT
Jim Manley
Has anyone tried installing HA on a Pi 3B running Pixel using the all-in-one script Pi installer script? It didn’t complete after downloading a bunch of stuff seemingly correctly, and never got to the point where it asked for the password. Since one has to be logged in via ssh, and the session locked up at a HASS quit prompt after displaying a Jessie medium-criticality error many lines before that, I lost the ssh session’s output when rebooting. After rebooting, the installation apparently bricked the micro-SD card, because the GUI pointer froze and the networking icon indicated that the WiFi interface no longer existed (it only showed the red up-and-down arrows icon that I assume is for the default Ethernet interface), and so SSHing in was no longer an option (I don’t have an Ethernet hub handy).
Another reboot resulted in exactly the same response, and I have no way to easily get to the installation log, as I don’t have handy the pieces necessary to boot to a USB device and then mount the micro-SD card, or plug the card into a Linux system that has an SD card interface available (built-in or USB). Has anyone successfully installed HASS on a Pixel distro?
I don’t want to repeat the whole process if it doesn’t work with Pixel, since it can take well over an hour just for the HASS installation script to run. I’ve heard that Pixel doesn’t work with some less-common WiFi dongles that work with earlier versions of Jessie, Wheezy, etc., so there are apparently already some issues with Pixel going in.
tesla
Cool video!