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Comment by jauntywundrkind | Hacker News Reader

I miss the power control.

I really want my home gaming machine to be an on-demand remote streaming system.

I don't expect to use this for that, I think Sunshine & Moonlight are probably going to give better results. But, I do need a way to turn my system on and off.

Alas, try as I might (I just tried again last night for a couple hours), my Gigabyte board refuses to suspend. It just wakes up immediately. There's a whole ass section of the AechWiki for Gigabyte boards being trouble, alas... Never ever again! https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management/Wakeup_tri...

So I kind of need a remote kvm, but one that can also trigger power on on my computer.

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Wake on LAN has existed for decades, and works just fine for that if you’ve got an always on machine somewhere on your network. I have Home Assistant set up so that I can hit a button on my phone and it’ll wake my PC from wherever I am and let me connect via Parsec. Once I’m in powering off is fine because I can just tell Windows to shut down.

If you are running Windows try holding shift when you click the shutdown menu item, it’ll force it to do a full power down rather than suspending.

Has existed on decades, just requires the simple process of turning it on in your BIOS, then changing your network adapter advanced settings in Windows to Wake on Magic Packet, and configure the power management settings to "allow this device to wake the computer", etc... It's like a 20 step process.

That’s three steps

AFAIK you can't send wol packets between subnets, or over wireguard, without either reconfiguring your router firewall or setting up an proxy service on Lan what you can poke to actually send the wol request.

Wake on LAN requires working suspend, I believe. That's not working, because alas many desktops and workstations don't suspend well these days.

Wake on LAN is my ideal yes & would be perfect for this application. If only suspend werent broken. It's fantastically easy to setup in systems-networkd, a one line WakeOnLan=magic in your .link file. Easy as that for my laptop! https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wake-on-LAN#systemd.link

Depends on the board, I've had many mobos which power on when they receive WoL.

Check your bios settings.

Also, you can probably just strap a wifi-capable relay to power pins on your motherboard.

> Also, you can probably just strap a wifi-capable relay to power pins on your motherboard.

That's a lot more work than just buying a different KVM that already exposes its spare GPIO pins for exactly that purpose. There are plenty of options that come bundled with the necessary cables and adapters to connect the KVM to the motherboard headers while leaving the existing power/reset buttons usable.

Wake on LAN should work from S5 (off), as long as you leave the power supply switched on; but the EU ErP very low standby power setting usually needs to be off.

You need an always-on machine, and a wired network connection since this rarely works over wifi. This excludes a lot of setups.

Would you happen to haven any write-up on how you configured such a setup? Or some links to posts you found useful to set this up?

There's not much to it to be honest. If you've got Home Assistant running then https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/wake_on_lan/ will sort you out, and I have Parsec (https://parsec.app) installed on my desktop so that it starts on boot.

Thank you for the pointers! I'll start from there.

> but one that can also trigger power on on my computer.

Wake on LAN is nice, when it works. For everything else, there's ~ $10 modules you can by from Ali Express. They are essentially a small WiFi radio and a digital switch. You wire it in-line with the power/reset switch on your PC case.

They're very simple devices so either Tasmota or ESPHome or DIY from scratch isn't that difficult.

I have a few PCs in my rack and I can monitor the power LED status and press the power/reset buttons remotely. I used Home Assistant to integrate them with my KVM so just switching to a different bank of ports on the KVM will wake up the matching PC.

do you have a link

Not immediately handy, but the two devices that I used are from a few years ago. Maybe these model numbers have been deprecated for newer hardware.

Sinilink PCle Computer Remote (XY-WPCE)

Sinilink USB Computer Remote (XY-WPCL)

If you have the space and a spare PCI Express slot, I suggest going that route just for the slightly tighter integration; if memory serves, there is a always active 3.3 volt supply as well as a way to infer if the PC is awake or not. You still need jumper wires off to the front panel header though for power and reset purposes.

Here's one:

https://aliexpress.com/item/1005005287125116.html

There are different kinds of options in the related products section.

Do yourself a favor and make sure it's preflashed with ESPHome, eg https://a.co/d/8wh4oEK

I just recently converted my gaming PC to a game streaming system. I considered getting a PiKVM for power/resolving issues remotely but I ended up going with Wake-on-LAN. Though setting it up was a hassle.

If you just need power control and your motherboard supports it, I've seen that some people use smart plugs and enable a setting in their BIOS that turns on the computer whenever it detects power.

Ha! I stumbled upon this by mistake. I wanted the camera to be able to turn on the PC to store recordings, but while tweaking the BIOS settings, I somehow got that wrong, and instead the PC turns on whenever it detects power.

I have it connected to an Eve Energy so I can track power usage, and that turned into a good remote way to turn it on.

Then with a Tailscale, I remote into it easily.

The downside is that I can't shut it down remotely without knowing when exactly to also turn off the plug. I could create some automation, but it takes about 2 seconds being off before turning on again.

>The downside is that I can't shut it down remotely without knowing when exactly to also turn off the plug. I could create some automation, but it takes about 2 seconds being off before turning on again.

Huh, I would have expected the BIOS to not do that if it detected a graceful shutdown (or at least have a longer grace period).

Use a WiFi smart plug. None of the WoL headaches, and can be used from anywhere.

It can be a little more refined than that. This is cheap and replaces the wired PWR/RST buttons: https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/expansion-car...

I go for whole power strips now: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tp-link+smart+power+strip&crid=JA...

Probably could use those opto isolated Shelly relays and they run their own web server you can manage the state from

Why not a device that can turn your computer on and off, and let sunshine + moonlight do what they do (and likely do better and absolutely be much cheaper than hardware capture)? There are a tons options for something like this at every price level, here is a random one based on an archpopular ESP microcontroller: https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/expansion-car...

Honestly this is why I just buy Supermicro workstation boards with BMCs for everything. No need to mess with third party stuff or guess if the vendor's WoL is going to work right (or deal with the possibility you need to hard restart the computer). Everything is just cooked in from the start.

Their boards kind of suck. Poor quality control and poor support. I switched to Asrock Rack and never looked back.

Both nanokvm and jetkvm have modules that emulate the power button press modules!!

would like to add pikvm in there as well.

Use a smart socket and set your bios to always turn on when power is on

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