Fireplace control?
TrikinCurt
Posts: 158
Anything out there to do gas fireplace conrol beyond a relay? Relay is fine but I would like control over fan, flame height, etc without having to use the proprietary on wall keypads...
Curt
Curt
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TrikinCurt
Posts: 158
Comments
It was not the problem that it couldn't work but the manufacturer of the equipment told me that warrenty would stop if try to do so. My customer agrees with me that he wouldn't take the risk and so we cancelled this thing. I need to mention that the control should be done then by relay's (there was a possibillity to do that). If the the fireplace gas equipments support this maybe you can control it by IR so you don't have to modify anything on the equipment.
Good Luck
My solution, which I pitched to the customer, but never implemented (because he lost interest in the idea), was to get a second ultrasonic remote, disassemble it, and wire a relay output into the button pad, then install the modified remote in a wall box within range of the fireplace.
The one thing that made me leary of the whole thing, and sharing this with the customer may have been what decided him against it, was that if anything went wrong, you had the potential of the fireplace turning on unsupervised. Granted, it's hard to imagine a malfunction pulsing a relay, but if a power surge or interuption caused that hard-wired remote to think it saw a button press, I would not want that fire coming on with no one in the room. To me, that's the ultimate automation system nightmare - when automatic events not only happen out-of-turn, but are dangerous. I wouldn't entertain automating a fireplace now, not unless I had some way of being sure it was really safe.
I am often surprised at how little people actually seem to control with all of these control products. For most here is it just AV? I could use a universal remote for that
Curt
Trikin
The legal implications are enough to make this scenario something to avoid. If it was to be a fixed in place wall Touch Panel it would be safer but still have the problems that Dave eluded to.
I would have to agree that for most dealers the simpler the system the more profitable and least headache and "call back" but I would say that most of the forums participants are integrators not AV installers. I'll connect to anything that will let me, sometimes just because I can and at my own expense.
And despite what I previously said I have connected to a fireplace control but not as you intend. My situation was to facilitate a draft inducing fan that had to be remotely located far from the room where the fire place was. This was on the finish when they noticed the FP did not draft properly which in itself is a code violation so with safety in mind I came up with the attached .jpg as a solution. It still was controlled only via the local hand held remote but used a independant Radio RA relaying system and products I got from Exhausto to control, test for proper draft, pe-purge and post purge. Given the obstacles and the safety issues I feel we made the fireplace better and safer than leaving it alone.
Not to thread jack, but...
I tend to never do anything that produces open fire, wild bolts of electricity, moves lots of water freely or can chop off some finger or limb.
Liability insurance has a way of cancelling your policy if they find out that you were in control of such a thing.
We just typically say no...
One thing to keep in mind is that most of the units I've dealt with use extremely small amperage and can be difficult to trigger with a long wire run between the AMX processor and the fireplace. This is easily overcome with a 12v relay from (INSERT FAVORITE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY STORE).
Jeff
At this moment i'm programming a fireplace with Kal-fire Biko control.
It's a control interface who needs to 0-10v dc for flame control
and a relay for off and on.
I don't see i work at this time but that will be in a short while.
I'll keep you informed.
But as we in Iceland don?t use fireplaces that much and we have almost no dealers here I ask: Are there any brands out there with ON/OFF and flame control and controllable via AMX? And has someone implemented this with success?
This is a penthouse in a new beautiful 18 story building.. Hate too burn it down!
Curt