Restart after blackout

R

randytsuch

Pulling my weight
Oct 1, 2016
496
179
Went on vacation last week, looking forward to be able to VPN into my network, and check out the cams while away.

So of course almost as soon as I leave, there is a blackout (very widespread one), and my PC doesn't boot back up. If it did boot up, I have BI set to autostart.

Could not log into BI all week, come home and find PC off :(

Because I had the pieces, I built my own PC for running BI on, and it was pretty cheap. I used an MSI motherboard, and the MSI bios has on option to turn on the PC after it loses power.

I set the option, and tried it. If I turn off the PC in windows, it does NOT turn back on.

But when I pulled power plug(NOT recommended, windows does not like this), and then plugged back in, it turned itself back on, and started BI.
So had I set this option before, I would have been able to monitor my cams, even after a blackout.

Don't know if the dells and other PCs people use have this option, you would need to get into the bios and look.

Randy
 
Tried WOL last night, and it didn't work :/
Found this tutorial, some more stuff I need to do, I just enabled the bios WOL so far
Wake On LAN (WOL) | MSI HQ User-to-User FAQ

Long term, I'd like to be able to send a WOL from my pi.
I could either do this on a "timer", maybe twice a day. 99.999% of the time, this would do nothing. But if my PC was off, it would turn it on (I hope lol). Found some info about using cron to do this.
Other option is to figure out a way to add a manual command, so I could turn on the PC if I ever notice it's off.
Or if I am motivated I could do both.

Well, first I need to get WOL working, then I will see about sending from pi.
 
looney2ns said:
In my Optiplex, you had to have the correct power saving setting turned off in the bio, so that the network card didn't go off.
Click to expand...
Based on that link, I have "ERP Ready" that needs to be disabled. This is supposed to be a power saving feature.

Randy
 
May give up on WOL, can't get it to work.

Setup my PC per the link above, and no WOL.

I tried a couple different WOL monitor programs, running on the BI PC, and they never see a WOL magic packet come over.
I've tried sending WOL from my router, a MAC and an ipad, never seems to get through.

The BI PC is connected to my POE router, and is on a VLAN with my ASUS router. But since the VLAN includes the router, I think it should see the WOL magic packets come through. I can see the BI PC from all the other devices in my network, the BI PC also acts as my time server for the little ESPs I have been adding lately.

So any suggestions?
I'm sure it's something stupid, but I don't know what.
Otherwise, this was just in case I get a power outage while not around, and the PC bios doesn't restart the machine like it should.
A nice to have, but hopefully can live without.

Randy
 
So I lied, spent some more time on it.
Installed wireshark on the BI PC to monitor ethernet traffic, and unplugged all my cameras so there wasn't much traffic.
Then figured out router wasn't really sending the WOL.
Installed WOL app on my android phone, and that worked.
Played with a bios setting, and some windows settings and it worked.

Some things that caused my grief was the router not really sending wol, the apreltech monitor not working, and having to change to port on the depicus monitor program. Once I knew I was sending the wol, didn't take long to get the settings right for it to work.

I also found the domoticz can send wol, and I set that up and it works. This will let me send a wol from anywhere, I can vpn into domoticz and just use that.
 
It works, I don't need to add a zwave switch.
And the real problem is trying to pretend to push the power on button.
My out of the box solution would have been to use a relay connected to an ESP module, running ESP easy talking to Domoticz. Its easier than it sounds, could have wired the relay in parallel with the power on switch, and have the ESP pulse the relay closed for half a second or so. I already do something similar to open/close my garage door with Domoticz.

But I have WOL working now, so no need to do anything more.

This is a PC I made, mostly using stuff I already had. Bought a MSI motherboard, H81 eco that I'm using.

Randy
 
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