WIP - Fake Fire

More of a brainstorming prompt, but I am looking to throw together a quick and dirty flameless fire for camping during the (increasingly more frequent) fire bans.

There are a few commercial options (e.g. https://www.indoorcampfires.com/, FauxFire® Campfire - Technifex Products) for inspiration.

Lights / looks

  • RGB Leds
  • Fabric blown by a fan (Thanks @wander)
  • Laser reflected of mylar (Thanks @wander)

Noise

Smoke

  • Dry ice (Thanks @mike)
  • Steam
  • Fog machine

Heat

  • ?

Smell

  • ?
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When I bought my 1963 vintage house 13 years ago it came with a fake fireplace with a fake fire in it. It’s one of those old plastic log things with the revolving light bulb and foil behind it. I covered up the fireplace with a very large tool cabinet and the fake fire is still sitting in the fireplace hidden by my tool cabinet. I found a YouTube video of my exact fake fire. Apparently they have become somewhat of a collector item for people who collect tacky things from the 60’s so maybe someday I’ll be motivated to move my tool cabinet, retrieve the fake fire and try selling it.

I’d love to rig up a decent fake fire…
I bought some tiki torches a while back and they give off so much smoke i gave up on using them…

I’ve also been contemplating something like this; I was basically thinking about a fake tiki torch, with a small fan, fabric or decorating paper, with LEDs underneath the fan.

If you want it to smoke/smell, I’d suggest checking out e-juice mixture recipes, with a smokey flavouring agent. (Obviously sans the nicotine, but propylene glycol/vegetable glycerine mixtures might just work the way you want if you can get a small drip going on a heating element.)

There are some excellent fire sketches out there for RGB LEDs. Here is an example. I think adding sound makes a big difference.

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The sound bit is pretty easy with a cheapy mp3 module like one of these:

it has a small mono amp so all you need is a mini sd card and a speaker…
find a few crackling fire sound files and play in a continuous loop…

maybe make use of convex parabolic mirror with an image of the fire?

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