Patented Fire Simulation Controller

Fire protection engineers at Halfkann + Kirchner needed to test smoke extraction systems in buildings by simulating realistic fire progression. They had designed a sophisticated multi-level gas burner device with adjustable burner rings, but needed an electronic control system that would allow precise control of multiple gas burner levels, programmable fire curves matching real fire behavior, real-time adjustment during tests, and a user-friendly interface for drawing custom fire progression curves. Without this, the mechanical device couldn't be operated with the precision required for standardized fire safety testing.

As a high school summer intern, I designed and built the complete electronic control stack. For the hardware layer, I created a custom PCB design for the control interface, handling signal routing between the microcontroller and gas valve actuators. The firmware layer consisted of an ATmega microcontroller programmed in C and Assembler for real-time control, handling precise timing for gas valve control, temperature sensor reading, and serial communication with the host PC. I developed a Windows DLL driver enabling the GUI application to communicate with the hardware via serial protocol. Finally, the application layer was a Windows desktop application with a graphical fire curve editor where engineers could literally draw the desired heat release curve with their mouse, and the system would execute it precisely via the gas burner arrays. The system enabled smooth, programmable fire simulations that could replicate various fire scenarios, from slow-building fires to rapid flashover events. One thing I learned quickly working with fire safety engineers: fire rarely kills people directly - smoke does. The control system therefore needed to execute realistic fire progression profiles for tests where smoke extraction performance was the real concern.