Hi,

I have severe allergies and so use my desktop computer through a glass panel. At the moment I need someone to turn it on for me. However, I'd like to buy a part for my PC so I can turn it on with a remote or something similar instead. Can this be done? Our regular TV remotes work through the glass panel so something INFA-RED could work also. Could my Pocket PC be of help?

What technologies are there?

What prices do they start at? Where can I get them?

Thanks,

S.



Season BubbleGirl
International author and motivational icon hailing from Australia.

Writer of A Doggy Diary (Ingram/Baker & Taylor, 0-9766-2213-0), Music Mash and autobiography, Absolute Individual: Life In a Bubble (Zeus Publications, 1-922-1837-7; Ingram/Baker & Taylor, 1-5968-2040-3)

www.bubblegirl.net - where individuality truly shines

Jochen Schmid suggested a physical power switch. But that might not
work so well with a power management system.

Perhaps you can find someone to bypass the power button on your
computer. I _think_ that could be done without solder; just cut two
wires and use "wire nuts" to splice in a new set of wires with a new
button. Not much skill required. But you probably want someone who
knows enough to be sure they're not causing any harm.


On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:07:22 +0930, "Season BubbleGirl -
BubbleGirl.net" <bubblegirl@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

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Robert E. Zaret, eMVP
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Boston, MA 02116
www.penfact.com

HI Bubble Girl,

Not sure how technically literate you are but all over the world a lot
of organisations have their work PCs powered on remotely using the WOL
setting (Wake on LAN), in order ot do maintenance and software
installations. I've not had to do this at home, but 5 minutes searching
for scripts to do this suggests to me that you can do it with equipment
costing practically nothing, assuming you already have a PDA. You need
a hub, a compact flash ethernet card (or wireless card) in the PDA and
a LAN card (NIC) in the PC. Plus some free utilities on your PDA such
as vxUtil. Alternatively, buy a really old, cheap laptop that does not
give you allergies and use it to wake up the main PC.

You should be able to power on the PC using a PDA or any device that
has a wireless or wired connection. When you send a packet with the IP
address and MAC address of the PC, if WOL has been enbabled in the
BIOS, then it will wake up.

The beauty of this is that it will cost almost nothing. The downside is
that you need some technical expertise, but if you have this or have
someone prepared to help, then it should not be difficult. Here's a web
site that describes what to do:

http://gsd.di.uminho.pt/jpo/software...o-2.html#ss2.1.

Here's another that gives you a script to do it, but your PDA may not
necessarily support
scripting:.http://cwashington.netreach.net/depo...tType=vbscript

Hi again,

I feel a right idiot, but 5 seconds after my last post, I went to the
next option on the vxUtil utilities on my PDA. Guess what, the menu
item just called 'M' is actually a Wake On LAN utility. Just put in the
main PC's MAC address, then click Send.

The PC's MAC address can be found on the main PC in under 30 seconds.
If you have a PDA, vxUtils may be downloaded free of charge at
http://www.cam.com/vxutil_pers.html.

Bill,

Canberra, Australia

"WhiteStarLine" <billfrost@gmail.com> writes:

It's surprisingly easy to do. I've done this for a remote lab.

A BIOS that supports WOL might also support "keyboard wakeup" or
"keyboard power-on". That would be a vastly simpler solution.

--kyler