10 years ago I had a problem: I burn wood to heat the house. The problem was that many times I had something else to do and couldn’t wait for the fire to go out and close the hatch that lets air in the boiler. If the hatch is left open the air goes thru the boiler and cools it down quicker.

The solution: I installed a raspberry pi with a usb cd drive. From the cd drive I tied a fishing line via the adjusting arm to the hatch. When the cd drive opens the hatch closes. I then host a website on the raspberry where I can push for example on ”Close the hatch after one hour” and it would do it.

It was a temporary solution and I have had parts for a better arduino solution for years, but here we are 10 years later.