I use it to wake my NAS a few minutes before a backup job.
I've also built a reset-on-LAN card using an old wake-on-LAN-capable NIC and some simple circuitry to shape the pulse so it's suitable for the motherboard's reset signal. I send a WOL packet to the otherwise-unused address, and kapow, the presumably-wedged machine is no longer wedged!
interesting, one could probably power it from the motherboard itself pretty easily, too!
One of the pins of the power switch is probably 5V (though possibly high impedance if a pull-up is used, so not much power).
But I think I'll rather look into one of these Pi-based "ilo" with HDMI in and USB gadget support to get remote access to the BIOS as well. It may also be useful for remotely debugging computers of family members :)
Yes, it is powered from the motherboard. The mobo's WOL header, if present, contains +5VSB, wake, and ground. It's intended to power the NIC since the motherboard's slots aren't powered when the machine is off. (At least, ISA slots weren't, and PCI added standby power in a later revision.)
Or, you can just tap the +5VSB line from the ATX wiring directly. It's the same as on the WOL header. USB-equipped boards tend to power the USB ports from standby too, to support USB wake events, whether from keyboards, modems, or whatever. Plenty of options.
If I were doing it again, yeah, I might use an ESP chip. That would give me power, reset, and serial, and I can always enable a serial console in my OS. I wonder if the ESP32's camera peripheral could read HDMI...
I almost exclusively boot my desktop via WoL, either by running the command from a laptop or hitting a button on my phone (homescreen shortcut -> termux script -> ssh to router -> send WoL to desktop).
I use it for my desktop computer from my laptop. I also use sunshine/moonlight to stream games in the living room, and moonlight also supports waking the PC up, so apparently there is demand for the feature.
I have a VPN between my home and work networks and I often leave my desktop in stand-by, so when I want to use my desktop for something, I SSH into one of my home servers and send a WOL packet to wake it up.
It is useful for IT staff especially on big properties or when working remote since we don't have to wait for a user to wake up a machine for us or go there ourselves, as long as one on the lan is reachable. I did this in 2022.
I've also built a reset-on-LAN card using an old wake-on-LAN-capable NIC and some simple circuitry to shape the pulse so it's suitable for the motherboard's reset signal. I send a WOL packet to the otherwise-unused address, and kapow, the presumably-wedged machine is no longer wedged!
Writeup here:
https://www.i3detroit.org/reset-on-lan-an-ethernet-aware-rem...