Three years back we built a new house. We wanted to have a gas/propane fireplace installed in the house. While ordering I did the normal investigations and comparing different fireplace, we decided to order the Bellfire fireplace.
I’ve managed to control the fireplace using ESPHome. I’ve documented all the steps in the journey, the posts include an introduction to Relays, ESP boards,and ESPHome.
The posts are also interesting if you want to start exploring ESPHome, which is an amazing extension to Home Assistant.
It ended up to be 10 articles , you can find them on my blog.
This project was also presented in the Advance track of the Home Assistant Conference 2020, the recording will be available soon. Deep links to articles below.
Great work! I have fireplace with a Mertik Maxitrol controller and will be trying your solution.
Do you know if there’s a way for the ESPHome board to know whether the fireplace is currently switched on or not? Let’s say someone switches on the fireplace using the original remote, therefore bypassing ESPHome. Do you have any ideas on how to check / monitor the state of the fireplace?
I don’t think you can get the status of the controller. There are no output pins available on the controller.
The only solution I can think of is replacing the fireplace remote with a remote that integrates with HomeAssistant and control all interaction of the fireplace remote using HomeAssistant.
, you can find them on my blog.