Humans have been connecting around fire since the dawn of time. The fireplace is the focus of many houses and apartments, but our urban lifestyles don't always lend themselves to all the tending and feeding a fire requires. Many houses have antiquated fireplaces that no longer work, but are still designed to be the focal point of the room. 

In this project, we'll create an artistic LED fireplace insert for your fireplace. Laser-cut clear acrylic flames are placed above high-density LED strips controlled with WLED, a free, open-source control program that works over WiFi. The flames "disappear" when they're turned off, but can be started up with a click on your phone or a request to Alexa. Make your own custom flame animations in WLED, which gives you sliders and palettes and all sorts of controls. 

Take back your hearth.

Parts

You'll Also Need

• A laser cutter (Don't have one? Go join your local makerspace!)
• 3/4" Clear heat shrink tubing for sealing the ends of the strips
• Hot glue gun
• Soldering iron & accessories
• 1/4" plywood sheet for the base 
• 1/4" cast acrylic sheet for the flames
• Wood glue or CA glue

You can get the plywood and acrylic both at your local hardware store, or shop around online once you know your project's dimensions. My project used about 24" x 36" of each to make a fireplace that is about 20" wide and 15" deep, with a height of around 13".