Summer is ostensibly here in the UK, but it’s the kind where the thought of sitting beside a roaring fire is more appealing than it might be in a typical June. So this delightful project caught our attention for more reasons than its originality: a Raspberry Pi fireplace.

Landlord says “NO”

Maker Peinador was delighted when they found an old fireplace in their new room. However, if you’ve ever rented somewhere, you will know that it tends to come with strict rules and regulations. Peinador was thus faced with a major conflict of interest in their new home: “Who doesn’t like the warmth and comfort of a fireplace? The fire brigade and my landlord, that’s who.”

Lighting a real fire with wood was not an option. Creating a fake fire using a Raspberry Pi, LEDs, and a speaker was, however, a highly compelling one.

Three-point emulation

The maker wanted to emulate three main aspects of a real fireplace with this project:

• Flickering flames
• The crackling of burning logs
• The ability to control the intensity of the fire

For the flickering flames, Peinador turned to an 8×8 NeoPixel NeoMatrix from Adafruit. The fireplace package from the maker’s GitHub repo is responsible for emulating the flickering flames across the NeoPixels. A selection of free crackling fire sounds plays via a tiny 3W speaker and an amplifier breakout board from Adafruit. Everything is wired up to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, safely encased in ABS plastic with holes left so the speaker can be heard, and tucked away in the bottom of the maker’s retro fireplace. The whole thing together gives the delightful illusion of softly crackling flames.

Smoky upgrades

The ability to control the intensity of the fire will come with an upgrade to battery power and some forthcoming code to make the LEDs sound-reactive. The maker also had a thought about including a small water vaporiser to emulate smoke, but they decided to keep it simple and avoid the need to worry about waterproofing the other electronics. I think it’s a neat little emulator as is. Work smart, not hard, that’s what I always say.