Here in Southern California, there is no need for a fireplace, but many houses have them. The residents that have them probably don’t use their fireplace much, since they are very inefficient, and if they burn wood or logs, it can cost quite a bit. Not to mention they would be a big contributor to air pollution. That’s probably the reason why many fireplaces have a “log” with a natural gas burner inside.
I remember many years ago when the TV stations broadcast during Xmas Eve, they showed a picture of a fire in a fireplace. They didn’t have automatic programmed digital playback equipment then, and their tape players would have required one of the staff to miss his vacation to be at the studios to man the equipment. So they just let everyone go home for vacation and pointed a camera at the fireplace picture, probably a Xmas greeting card. You could turn your TV on and the set would be your fireplace for Xmas eve. This makes me wonder if it might be easier to just record a ten minute video of a real fireplace, and put it on Youtube for everyone to enjoy. Just let it loop and playback over and over again.
I’ve been thinking of how to scale up Quantsuff’s Electronic Fireplace to the size of a small fire in a fireplace. The light output is going to have to be more powerful, maybe a few watts of LED light. I was thinking about using a combination of yellow, amber and orange LEDs to get some color that’s similar to a fire. If the different color LEDs are connected independently to the randomized outputs of the drivers, then some variation in the color temperature of the light will be seen.
But it will cost a fair amount to get some amber LEDs that put out high power. I thought that using old technology might be cheaper and just as good visually. If an incandescent light is run at much lower voltage than it rated voltage, its lifetime can be hundreds of thousands of hours, and its color temperature might be the same as the light from a fireplace. The bulbs would never have to be replaced. I have a whole box of 1152 12V, 21CP auto tail light lamps (CP = candlepower). I’ll have to try one on a lower voltage supply and see how it looks.
I put one of the 1152 lamps on a power supply. At 3 to 4V and about 3/4 amp, the light put out a nice orangish amber glow. But it got quite warm, so it will have to be mounted in something that won’t melt. The filament has a slow response, much like the light from a fireplace. I don’t need to slow the turnon and turnoff so a square wave would work. More to follow.