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Forcing your fireplace to make nice with home automation - Ant-like Persistence

Forcing your fireplace to make nice with home automation

It took a year and a half of various efforts and dead ends, but by now I have actually figured out a way to force the fireplace in the photograph to make nice with a home automation ecosystem.  It is a built-in gas-fired fireplace.  This article describes the dead ends and the eventual success. 

Fireplaces like this usually have a bed of crushed glass or pumice gravel across the bottom, and usually have halogen lights underneath to light up the glass bed.  They usually have a forced-air blower to draw room air into a plenum so that it can be heated and returned to the room.  They usually have a gas controller that uses a stepper motor or multistage valve system to permit a user to select any of various flame heights.   The fireplace costs between $2500 and $5200 and of course there is an installation labor cost as well.

And nothing about the fireplace design makes nice with any ordinary home automation ecosystem.  Everything is tied to a nasty proprietary remote control which you can see here:  

It turns out that no matter what brand of high-end built-in gas-fired fireplace you might choose (and there are a dozen brands of such fireplaces, all costing many thousands of dollars), every fireplace maker uses a gas controller and remote control solution from a single company in Italy called SIT S.p.A (company web site).  This is one of those niche-market areas, I guess, where there is no profit potential for any second or third company to engineer a competing controller and remote control solution.  So there is exactly one company that you are forced to go to if you want to manufacture built-in fireplaces like this.  And that one company is SIT.  Twenty or thirty years ago they designed this gas controller and remote control solution, and they did the approvals to get it CSA-approved (the gas safety trade association, Wikipedia article) and to work out that it can comply with every building code in the world.  Having accomplished all this, SIT leaned back and decided never to spend another penny on improvements or enhancements.  (The sole exception being the apparently unsuccessful attempt to connect the controller to wifi, discussed below.)  And they realized they could charge almost whatever they like because no other company is ever going to decide to try to enter this niche market.  In case you wondered, the replacement parts are very expensive.

Let’s start with why I hate the remote control itself.  This is the kind of remote control where the designer of the remote control uses icons or hieroglyphs that the designer thinks are clear and easy to understand but no ordinary user could ever guess the meaning of.  And the designer desperately tries to keep cost down by minimizing the actual button count, since buttons cost money and contribute to form factor.  So each button is made to have at least two or three meanings.  We have often seen consumer electronic device user interfaces where any particular button has at least two meanings depending on whether it receives a brief tap or a long push, or has a third meaning if you tap it twice in quick succession rather than just once.  These are the sorts of things you could never guess to do, and could only learn by reading and re-reading a user manual.

This remote control is even more evil than that.  This remote control has situations where any particular button has different meanings based on whether you have or have not pressed certain other buttons recently, and how many times you pressed those other buttons.

So for example look at the bottom button with the circle in it.  What is your guess about the meaning of that button?  Could it be the “off” button, with the circle meaning the numerical digit zero?  Good guess, but no!  It turns out that circle button is the one that affects the meaning of “up and down” depending on how many times you recently pressed the circle button.  Depending on your recent button-pressing activity with the circle button, the up and down buttons might mean “make the halogen lights brighter or dimmer”, or the up and down buttons might mean “make the air circulation blower go faster or slower”, or the up and down buttons might mean “make the flame to be more or less flame”.  Or, this remote control can be wall mounted with the goal that it will be sort of a thermostat for controlling the temperature of the room, in which case there is a button pressing history state where the up and down buttons mean “set the desired room temperature to be warmer or cooler”.

Never mind that this “thermostat” requires batteries and the batteries run out eventually.  Not like your ordinary house thermostat that gets powered by wires.

Oh and never mind that inside the fireplace, the radio receiver that receives the commands from this remote control is a thing that itself runs only on batteries (four AA batteries) and not on AC power.  And they are in a place that is very hard to get at.  Most homeowners would be unable to figure out how to get in there to replace those batteries when they run out.  It is only a matter of time before those receiver batteries run down, and then it is impossible to control the fireplace at all, and there is no way the normal average homeowner would ever be able to figure out what to do next.  You can’t make this stuff up.

So let’s suppose you want Alexa to be able to turn the fireplace on and off.  Or let’s suppose you want to let your home automation system turn the fireplace on and off.   How might you tackle this?

You would, of course, start by studying the technical documentation from the fireplace manufacturer, to see whether there is some interface for home automation.   Nope.  Forget about it.  For these fireplace manufacturers, their idea of technical documentation is a poorly worded thing that mostly tells you the shape and size of the unit and how much free space you must leave around it to comply with building codes, and what you can and cannot do in the way of a flue for the exhaust gases.  But not a word about how you might somehow connect the fireplace to any external system.

After a lot of study and poking round, you eventually work out that the fireplace manufacturer outsourced the gas controller and remote control function to this company in Italy called SIT.  So the natural next step is to look at the technical documentation from SIT about its gas controller and its remote control solution.  Nope.  Forget about it.  The documentation, such as it is, talks only about how to integrate it with the rest of a built-in fireplace in the design and manufacturing process.  But not a word about how you, the end user, might somehow connect the fireplace to any external system.

You might think, surely the web site of this company SIT has a consumer-facing set of pages that will help the ordinary homeowner figure out how to connect their $5500 fireplace to Alexa.  Nope.

Here you can see the controller from this company SIT:

What you find, if you poke around inside the fireplace, is that from this controller, there are cables that connect to all of the places that you would expect, including:

  • to the gas control valve (for operating the pilot gas valve and the main gas valve)
  • to the halogen bulbs that light up the bed of glass chips
  • to the room-air blower that circulates room air through a plenum
  • from a radio receiver that receives commands from the RF remote control
  • to a spark igniter
  • from an electrode that senses whether the pilot light is burning (kind of like an old-fashioned thermocouple)
  • from AC electrical power
  • to a combustion-air blower that blows combustion air into the burner area and that blows products of combustion up the flue
  • from an air pressure sensor somewhere in the burner area, that permits independent confirmation of whether the just-mentioned combustion-air blower is functioning correctly or not
  • from a two-pin connector designated “main on-off switch” (which in this fireplace simply has a jumper across the two pins).

The first line of attack was, of course, to explore this “main on-off switch” that is set to be “always on” by the jumper.  So one of the first things I explored is whether maybe I could remove the jumper and put a dry-contact relay across these pins, and control the relay with the home automation system.   Oh and by the way it measured out at about 3.5 volts at these pins, suggesting that what is inside is maybe some DC voltage made available to an LED inside an LED-phototransistor chip.)

Close but no cigar.  If you use the remote control to turn “everything on” meaning the gas flame and the circulating air and the halogen lighting, and if you then open the connection between the two pins of the “main on-off switch”, this only turns the flame off.  It does nothing to turn the circulating air off or turn the halogen lighting off.  If you later short these two pins together, it only turns the flame back on.

There came a point where I considered putting in a three-pole double-throw relay.  A first pole would connect to the “main on-off switch” pins, to turn the flame on and off.  A second pole would be able to interrupt power to the halogen lights.  A third pole would be able to interrupt power to the room-air blower.  But this all seemed a bit like using a sledge hammer to do what a fly swatter does.  And this is a gas flame we are playing with.  What if somehow I interfered (unwittingly) with the normal safety design aspects of this controller and its relationship with the gas valve?

click to enlarge

Eventually sort of by accident I stumbled upon a $99 product called the Bond Bridge (photo at right, link).  The maker of this product says you can use this device to “add wi-fi to ceiling fans, fireplaces and Somfy shades.”  It claims to “work with Alexa, Google Home, and SmartThings.”  It says it provides “remote control via a Bond Home app” that “works with iPhone or Android.”

So I tried it.  But it turns out that the people at the Bond company who tried to figure out how to get their bridge to talk to SIT remote control fireplaces gave up.  Here is what I received in a tech support email message from a Bond tech support person:

If your remote is similar to the image above, unfortunately, the remote is not yet supported by Bond.  Based on the update that we received, the codes of the remote are complicated and the Bond could not replicate the other functions and capabilities of the remote.  We cannot guarantee you that it will work and we have no information if this remote will be tested again or supported any time soon.

They suggested I return the Bond Bridge for a full refund, so that is what I did.

click to enlarge

After a lot of clicking around on the Internet, I stumbled upon mentions of a product made by SIT called the “Proflame wifi dongle”.  This device plugs into a four-pin port on the controller that is labeled as “diagnostic interface”.

The documentation, such as it is, for this dongle sort of hints around that it will only work with certain versions of controller, namely controllers with green writing on them.  The one in the photograph has white writing, and the controller in the fireplace that I was struggling with has white writing.  Another bit of documentation says the dongle will only work with a controller with a certain firmware version, and I was able to work out that the controller in the fireplace that I was struggling with had a version number that was numerically much smaller.  The controller in the fireplace that I was struggling with had been placed into service a mere 18 months ago, but the firmware version in the controller was numerically so much smaller than the firmware version that supposedly works with the wifi dongle, that it gave an impression of having been manufactured maybe ten years ago.

This wifi dongle made by SIT is very close to being unobtainium.  Most web sites offering replacement parts for fireplaces list this dongle as “out of stock” (or they do not list the dongle at all) and the controller with the desired firmware version and green writing is likewise out of stock everywhere.  There were only two vendors that supposedly could ship this dongle, and each priced it at $234.  The retail prices for the controller tend to be $600 to $800.

It was with some difficulty that I was able to work out the radio frequency upon which this remote control sends commands to the fireplace.  The answer turns out to be 315 MHz.

click to enlarge

The solution for connecting the fireplace to home automation turns out to be available on Aliexpress for $12.38, a price that includes shipping from China.  It is a Tuya Smart RF (radio frequency) IR (infrared) wifi bridge (shopping cart link).  As you can see from the advertising image at right, this marvel permits infrared control of “water”.  (I must admit that until now I had not been aware that water is controllable by infrared signals.)  As you can see, one of the radio frequencies at which it can transmit RF commands is 315 MHz which is the frequency needed to talk to this fireplace (and, apparently, all models of fireplace).  Among the devices it says it can control using RF are “shutter device” and “rice cooker” and “laundry rack”.

By putting this device into “learn mode” and clicking around on the remote control that came with the fireplace, I was able to get it to learn the RF commands for “fireplace on” and “fireplace off”.  This turns everything on and off — the flame, the blower, and the lights.  If I use this to turn the fireplace on, it powers up with the flame and blower and lights set at whatever levels they were at when the fireplace was previously turned off.    (What this means is that if the user wishes to adjust the flame height or blower speed or dimming level of the lights, this must still be done using the original remote control.)

Basically what is going on is that this $12.38 device from China is able to mimic some of the RF transmissions of the original remote control.  The fireplace receives a signal that asks the fireplace “please turn yourself on” and the fireplace complies, by turning itself on.  So far as the fireplace knew, this signal apparently came from the original remote control.  Instead, this signal came from the $12.38 device.  Then it is similar with turning the fireplace off.  The fireplace turns itself off having been faked out by the $12.38 device which essentially tricked the fireplace into thinking that somebody had tapped the “power off” button on the original remote control.

I also found that it was a straightforward matter to connect this $12.38 device with a voice assistant such as Alexa or Google Home.  So now I can say “Alexa please turn on the fireplace” and Alexa will say “okay” and the fireplace will turn on.  I can say “Alexa please turn the fireplace off” and Alexa will say “okay” and the fireplace will turn off.

By the way let’s return briefly to the Proflame wifi dongle solution.  It is recalled that apparently you cannot actually buy one of these dongles, and if you somehow did get your hands on one of them, apparently it would probably not work with (the firmware version number of) the particular fireplace controller that is in your actual fireplace.  But let’s suppose you did somehow manage to buy one of the wifi dongles for $234, and then of course you would have to find and purchase and install a sufficiently modern controller module that it knows how to talk with the wifi dongle, which apparently costs $600 to $800).  Yes suppose you get all of this working.  It turns out that the command you would have to speak to Alexa is not simply “Alexa turn the fireplace on.”  No, the command that you would have to speak is:

Alexa use Proflame Connect and set the <room-name> fireplace to ON.

Yes, if you were to pursue this $834 solution instead of the $12.38 solution, you must also memorize magic words “use Proflame Connect” and include the magic words in your spoken command to Alexa.  You can’t make this stuff up.  I actually like it better that I only had to spend $12.38 and I can use natural language “Alexa please turn the fireplace on”.

Let’s talk through what this all adds up to in practice.  When I say “Alexa please turn on the fireplace”, what happens is the $12.38 device sends an RF signal to the fireplace to tell it to turn on.  Importantly, that complicated controller that appears in the photo above then goes through its entire power-up gas-on procedure.  There is some sort of blower activity to blow any unburned gas (from some previous unsuccessful power-on cycle, perhaps) out the flue, or at least to dilute any unburned gas a lot.   During this process, the air-pressure sensor device is checking to make sure the blower really is blowing and did not get jammed up or something.   Then the valve for sending gas to the pilot light gets opened.  A spark gap clicks to try to light the pilot light.  A second electrode nearby to the flame area of the pilot light tests for the conductivity of the gases nearby to that electrode, as a way of working out whether or not the pilot light actually did get lit and stayed lit.  Then (assuming this confirmation that the pilot light really did get lit and stayed lit) after a little while the controller opens the main gas valve to permit gas to flow into the main burner area.  This gas eventually gets set on fire by the pilot light and a sort of curtain of flame pops into view.  This flame curtain starts on the left (where the pilot light is located) and travels across the field of view to the right.

My point here is that the safety steps that the controller carries out in an effort to minimize release of unburned gas into the room … all of those steps get carried out in the same way regardless of whether the “please turn yourself on” command came from the original remote control or came from the $12.38 device.  There is no compromise of safety in this “integrated with home automation” approach.

24 Replies to “Forcing your fireplace to make nice with home automation”

  1. Hi Carl,

    Thanks for the information. I have a Mitsubishi free-standing gas fireplace that I hate for the following reasons:
    • The upper firebrick panel is poorly supported, broke, and fell into the flame area a year or two after installation.
    • It has a maddening remote control and no on-unit controller except an on-off switch that was not connected to anything. The installer could not figure out how to wire it into the controller.
    • The installer did not understand how the remote control worked.

    I plan to start a business manufacturing homes and other structures using relative lightweight materials that will withstand tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and other environmental insults without substantial damage and while simultaneously protecting the occupants.

    I thought finding high quality gas fireplaces and other such appliances for that business would be easy. So much for that idea!

    PS: I have no programming skills, but I admire yours! I love how the link in your emails drop me into the full article at the correct place to resume reading!

  2. Hi Carl, thanks for this! I think you have saved us all a lot of wasted time. I’m fortunate to have stumbled upon your blog as I’ve only just been looking to make my 4 year fireplace “smart”. I’m in the middle of my journey to automate many of my favourite things via Alexa. I took was looking at the Proflame remote as my fireplace has a SIT remote as well. But I don’t know how it works with their “Easy Chip Exchange” program at a cost of $199? What exactly are we paying for.

    Anyway, as you suggested, I bought the IR/RF transmitter device from China. I thought it was worth the minimal cost just to see if it works. I’ll report on my success when I get it. I may have to bother you again for instructions on how to make it “learn” the fireplace remote functions. That’s again for the tip!

    1. Thank you so much for commenting. I have nine extras of the IR/RF bridges. I should have just mailed you one! But yes the project of making the bridge “learn” the RF commands from the remote control was non-trivial for me. I had to try several times and only after several tries did I find that I had successfully “taught” the comments to the bridge. I’d be glad to try to help.

      1. Ha, ha…that’s funny! I actually bought 2 of them from different brands, just to cover my bases. If you actually had a written step by step guide I would love to get a copy. Obviously, there’s nothing official but any guidance would je helpful. Thanks a lot!

      2. Hi Carl! So my little IR/RF bridge device arrived today. It was a lot smaller than I expected and a little underwhelming. It has paired well with the Smart Life app I have installed on my phone but I find that the instruction booklet is very tiny and hard to read, even the pictures. I was wondering if you could give me some tips on how to get the device to “learn” my SIT remote’s functions. Anything you could provide would be most appreciated. Thanks.

        1. Hi Carl! Still unable to get my device to work but I’ll keep trying. I found another thing that I wanted you to have a look into, especially given your technical knowledge. It’s the DURABLOW SH3001 GAS FIREPLACE WIFI SMART HOME REMOTE CONTROL FOR MILLIVOLT VALVE IPI, WORKS WITH AMAZON ALEXA, GOOGLE HOME. You can find the full description on Amazon or the Durablow website. Please have a look and tell us what your thoughts are. It says it works with SIT controlled fireplaces. Thanks.

      3. Great post (I love the internet!) 🙂

        Curious:
        Did you ever learn why the Tuya device could only learn the on/off command? I was hopeful to have the ability to adjust flame height as well and would’ve assumed the remote is simply sending a different command to the receiver.

        1. Hey Eric! So did you get your Tuya device to actually work? At least on and off? I would settle for that. I would also appreciate any tips or instructions that you may have for me. Thanks in advance.

  3. Hello Carl and anyone else attempting to “crack” this impossible code! I am still unable to get my Tuya device to”learn” my SIT fireplace remote. I can confirm that I have a Marquis Solace fireplace by Kingsman, that uses a SIT Proflame GTMF system remote. The RF is 315 MHz. So back to the Tuya device. There are similar wifi bridge devices on AliExpress that claim they can learn from RF remotes and I was reading their specifications/description. The other one I looked at was a company called SITU, which at this point I believe the cosmos is just mocking me! But all of the descriptions state that a rolling RF frequency won’t work on these devices and that voice control via Alexa or Google, will also not work for devices requiring the DIY or learning function. Any, if anyone can response to this post with some pointers, that would be greatly appreciated. Also Carl, if you can comment on that Durablow device I mentioned, that would also be helpful. Thank you all once again and Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, and I also wish you all a very happy, healthy and safe New Year!

  4. Carl,

    Thanks for all the effort and information. I was just trying to get my fireplace into Home Assistant and was doing some research. I found this article SUPER useful: https://aarongodfrey.dev/home%20automation/automating_a_gas_insert_fireplace/
    The instructions given actually work with the Bond IO and I was able to integrate into HA, HOWEVER I don’t have access to all the buttons I learned. (ie. low, medium and high flame and the fan buttons). I have looked at the Bond IO API and there is a way to get to it, but it would probably require some Python or other code because HA doesn’t pull those items natively.

    If anyone figures that part out, please let me know.

    Good luck all!

  5. Ok Boys, I cracked it. I bought the
    TV xStream Fireplace Switch ON/Off. Voice Activated Fireplace ON/Off Switch, Must be Used with SmartPlug (not Included). Model usbo744 from Amazon for like $37 and change Canadian. It works with a smart plug and just turns fireplace on and off. Very simple to setup. Check it out!

  6. Brilliant. Thank you. Works from the Smart Life app, the Samsung SmartThings app, Alexa app, and voice control with the Amazon echo. It takes some digging around in the apps to get it all configured correctly. I imagine some hacker in China can now turn on my fireplace.
    I placed the IR/RF Wi-Fi unit under the sofa where it has a clear line-of-sight to the fireplace receiver.
    Total spend for new gas logs and voice control: under $250 and maybe 3 hours of installation and configuration.

    1. How did you manage to get the TUYA remote to learn the SIT remote’s functions? I haven’t gotten it to learn a single function so far.

      1. I could never figure it out myself which is why I bought the TV Xstream switch. Obviously more money but it at least works.

  7. It must be a compatibility issue of some sort. I’m sure you’ve tried every suggestion I’m going to give. Frequency of the fireplace receiver and the remote need to match of course. But as for instructions for using the Smart Life app: the device was discovered by the app, since the unit brand and model were unknown, it created a DYI folder for the recording the ON and OFF button. The thermostat functions of the original remote aren’t functions the IR/RF unit can do, so the only recorded buttons were ON and OFF. Then a “tap-to-run scene” needed to be created in the Smart Life app, which is what Alexa and SmartThings can recognize as functions. Give the apps access to each other, etc. Let me know if you want me to post a YT video or leave an email and I’ll reach out.

    1. A YT video definitely would be helpful. Thanks! I too couldn’t get mine to work which is why I went with my solution and it only cost like $37 CDN. But I would like to see if the original solution would work.

    2. I’m still not getting it to work. The TUYA IR+RF device is found and successfully added via the Smart Life app. Based on Carl’s excellent write-up here, I gather the SIT Proflame remote function is done with radio frequency; not apparent on the remote itself. In the Smart Life app, I select the Wi-Fi IR+RF Remote Control and then select Radio frequency Remote Box. As you noted, there is no suitable category for the fireplace so I select DIY. Within the Custom Learn menu, I further select DIY Other. The Button Learn screen has a plus sign to add a button and instructions to press and hold the key you want to learn. I press the + to add a key and it immediately to the instructions to point the remote control at the device and press the key to learn. This is without ever showing a virtual button within the DIY Other item, so no ability to “press and hold” anything. In any case, while the 5 second learn screen is up, I press the power button on the SIT remote within 2 inches of the TUYA device and – nothing. Smart Life goes back to the Button Learn screen with the plus sign and still no button defined. Touch Finish and then I’m back to a screen showing the DIY box with another DIY inside it, presumably the DIY device and it’s DIY button. Nothing to press though. I’ve tried adding this as a one-way switch also with no luck – the TUYA does not appear to pick up the SIT remote’s signal (fortunately the fireplace still does). If you’re down for putting a YouTube video out there, that’d be great! Anything you can tell me about what I’m doing or not doing that worked for you would also be great!

  8. My Napoleon Fireplace came with a Bluetooth controller that is also connected to the X0A port on the IFC. This controller is custom designed by Wolf Steel (the company that owns the Napoleon Brand) and is not a SIT OEM part like the WiFi Dongle. The part number is W190-0090 and it should be available at authorized Napoleon dealers as a spare part for much less than the SIT module. You can check out the FCC filing for it for some details on the board (FCC ID: VA8W190-0090)
    I managed to reverse engineer the Bluetooth LE protocol it uses, so I am at the stage where I have written a Python library that can control the fireplace through said Bluetooth Controller. It pretty much has the same control abilities the ProFlame WiFi dongle has (Flame on/off, Flame height, Blower Speed, Light Level, Aux Relay control, Switching between IPI/CPI). It can also control an optional LED controller (Model #W190-0125) that is custom to Napoleon fireplaces.

    There are limitations though: At least on my fireplace the Bluetooth controls completely cease to work once the RF remote is being used. It only resumes it’s function when the fireplace is turned off using the RF remote. Screenshots of the app suggest the controller notifies the app of that but for my setup this does not seem to be the case. The Bluetooth command that is supposed to query whether the fireplace is being controlled by the RF remote remains unanswered by the controller. Screenshots of the app in the Google Play Store suggest that a newer version of the controller is available (Firmware v11 for Bluetooth / v 1.17 for the MCU portion; I have v8 and v1.14 respectively). So possibly it’s that.
    The Bluetooth connection continues to function during that time but the state it reports doesn’t correspond to the actual state of the fireplace (i.e. flame height or light level). I would be interested to know whether this is also the case for the official ProFlame WiFi dongle.

    Eventually I’ll be looking to build this into an integration for Home Assistant. We’ll see if I get it done before fireplace season ends for me this year 😉

    Ultimately, I might (if I am brave enough) I’ll build a little sniffer cable using the required XHP-4 connectors to look into the serial protocol that’s being spoken on the X0A port. An ESP32 with ESPHome firmware could be a great stand-in for any of the other dongles that occupy X0A.

  9. To answer my own question: Yes, something else could live on the X0A port and talk to the ProFlame 2 at 9600 bauds. I figured out what it would have to say to the ProFlame 2, too.
    But my current research suggests it will unfortunately not remove the limitation of being unable to control the fireplace via that port when the RF remote is in use. This is seemingly a feature reserved for ProFlame 2 models with the infamous green printing.

    I have documented my findings here: https://bonaparte.readthedocs.io/en/latest/system_information.html

  10. this looks interesting: https://github.com/johnellinwood/smartfire

    Seems like the only bullet proof solution would be to get something like this working, with the raspberry pi proxying requests from the remote. (ie, the raspberry pi hears the remote’s commands, but the remote isn’t paired directly with the Proflame. Only the pi can send commands to the Proflame.)

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