Since the beggining of time, people have been mesmerized by fire. It's enchanting, entertaining and stories are told around them. People also have wanted to control fire - so began my journey of turning on/off my fireplace from my iphone.

I could have just used some smartplug from amazon and a crusty iPhone app that I had to open...but what kind of control would that ever provide my inner neolithic man-urges? Not much. Cool to show and use it once.

Also it's not very non-technical partner friendly. My wife doesn't want to open an app to turn on the fireplace. She wants a button or remote control that she can rest her fingers upon. Not some virtual button. The fireplace already has a remote - and she likes it. I just want to be able to also do this from my iPhone though....

To take it to the next level - I got it to work with homekit using a project called Homebridge that lets you connect a LOT of different IoT type-stuff into Apple's homekit. Homekit certification is expensive so many products only work with Alexa/Google - not HomeKit. Bummer, but Homebridge lets you overcome that. So yeah - I can turn on my fireplace from a shortcut on the iphone control center. Trés Cool.

The next part that I'm working on will provide a homekit enabled button (Single Click - turns on fireplace, Double Click - turns off) that is next to my couch. Using particle.io devices makes it easy to trigger events in other arduino devices and web APIs. The code here is designed for Particle.io devices, but can be slightly modified to work on a regular arduino.

This is a side-project of mine. I wanted to learn about Arduinos and ultimately, be able to control fire. I am not responsible for you using this code to accidentally burn down your house. Seriously, be careful. use at your own risk.

What I've got here

• Some terrible code that is a result of me not knowing how to code yet
• Some pictures of my setup
• A few screenshots of my phone and Macbook controls