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I need to be able to power my office pc up from home so I can remote in, but my router has proprietary voip firmware that's getting in the way. I've been looking and looking, but I'm just not turning up a solution. I wish I could figure out a way to get a low-power gadget connected to the internet so I could remote (telnet? ssh?) into that and get it to power a relay on the pc's power-on button. Any suggestions?

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Why can't you just leave it on? I know it's not as cool as remotely turning it on. But it does seam like a simpler solution. – NitroxDM Apr 11 '12 at 22:17
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@NitroxDM... power consumption (coreIIduo w/ mabye 500+watt power supply), wear/tear (using it 24/7/365 is just too much...it's very difficult to replace when it has problems), security (if it's off, i feel safer). – david Apr 11 '12 at 22:34
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@NitroxDM - Let me introduce you to my angry polar bear. – Polynomial Apr 11 '12 at 22:35
@ Polynomial -- I don't get the reference. – NitroxDM Apr 19 '12 at 20:32
This question got me thinking... how much power am I using. So I found out. Granted this is a small sample (48 hr) and doesn't take in to account weekends. i7, 350 Watt PS, 21.5" LCD x 2, 7" LCD, Turn Off At Night (24h): .89 kW h X $0.101 = $32.81/Year Leave On At Night (24h): 1.66 kW h X $0.101 = $61.20/Year I also found this expertcore.org/viewtopic.php?style=4&f=10&t=1448. it will do what you want if you have a Windows server running somewhere. – NitroxDM Apr 19 '12 at 20:38

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If I'm understanding you correctly, your router currently blocks the magic packet?

An embedded webserver (port forwarded) behind your router sounds like one way to go. This can also be the device that generates the magic packet on the local LAN to wake your PC without having to hack a relay/switch so it can be done all over existing ethernet - assuming that your router won't block any locally generated and sent magic packets <- you can test this first by using another PC to try to wake the target PC all on the local LAN.

If that works, you can make it really easy with an embedded Linux SBC (single-board-computer) combined with your choice of a light-weight open source webserver.

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Jon: yes, I believe that the router is blocking the magic packet because I'm not sure that its firmware will broadcast to the lan. How would I test your idea from another computer on the lan? To speak to your last point, I actually have a little HP e vectra computer (very old...128meg ram) that's currently used by my voip provier as a recording device. It's going to be available soon, and maybe it would work... it's currently using a gui-free linux install and they just remote in w/ a ssh client. – david Apr 11 '12 at 19:56
@david, if you're on linux: linux.die.net/man/8/ether-wake or linux.die.net/man/1/wol And on other platforms, there are a number of free utilities to send the packet to a destination. You just need the MAC address of the target computer. – Jon L Apr 11 '12 at 20:28
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500W PSU is to fuel when running full steam. If you run lean with screen saver OFFto disable monitor and no CPU use, Power should be a few percent. FWIW – Tony Stewart Apr 18 '12 at 6:35

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