Gas Fireplace Retrofit: the Warm Sound of Crackle and Pop

My house has one of these newer fireplace models. It is powered by natural gas and is completely sealed. That makes it safer because it exhausts to the outside and eliminates any exposure to carbon monoxide so only the heat makes its way through the glass.

GET the MP3 player

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GET the Amplifier

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There is a downside to these newer gas fireplaces. They completely SILENT and they odn't give you that warm feeling when you hear the wood log popping and crackling. So in this instructable, I will make my fireplace a little more authentic.

The plan is to create a device that plays a mp3 of popping and crackling sounds when the fireplace starts. So I came up with this design. It uses 4 components: an mp3 decoder, an amplifier, a speaker and a microcontroller.

The mp3 decoder I picked is called DFPlayer Mini. It supports multiple sampling rates can read files off an SD Card in FAT format Has adjustable audio levels But its best feature is that it can be controller over serial.

The code for this project is very straight forward and was done on an Arduino nano. In the code, I included the library and created a software serial to be used for the communication with the mp3 module. Then I started with a 30 seconds delay to give time for the fireplace to start. And then issued a command to play all mp3s on the sd card in a loop. I am only planning on having 1 file on the sd card, so that soundtrack will continuously repeat or until the fireplace is turned off.

The sound coming out of the mp3 module is not that loud. That is why I added the amplifier.

I love custom PCBs. They make any project look polished and less prone to wiring and soldering disasters. This PCB was made using a pcb manufactorer in China called PCBWay. You don't really need the PCBs, you can do the solder the connection using wires.

A week after placed my order, I got my boards. The boards turns out pretty good and are very compact. I added the components and connected the speaker. This might look like a small speaker but trust me, it can get very loud with that amplifier.

Under my fireplace, I have a controller that has a 5v output that I was able to power the whole device with.

Now I can sit back, relax and really enjoy my more authentic fireplace experience!

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* Much of the information contained is based on personal knowledge and experience. It is the responsibility of the viewer to independently verify all information.