[James] has an admirable house automation system which he’s been working on for years. It does things like screen the specify of the garage door, manage the lights, as well as it even notifies him of a power failure. One thing that wasn’t on the system yet are the fireplaces he has in his home. The hardware you see above is exactly how he patched into the fireplace remote manage system in buy to automate them.

The remote manage utilizes RF to interact with a base station. Unlike controlling house movie theater elements which utilize IR, this makes it a bit a lot more tough to patch into. Sure, we’d like to see some reverse engineering of the protocol to ensure that a basic radio module might be used, however [James] selected the path which would indicate the least amount of hacking on his part. He soldered wires onto the PCB for the buttons as well as linked to them utilizing reed relays. These let the Arduino simulate button presses.

With the rig linked to the house network he has a great deal of options. The system can sense if the home is occupied. If it figures out that nobody is house it will switch off the fireplaces. [James] likewise mentions the capability to screen for carbon monoxide or home fires, changing off the gas fireplaces in either case.