Frequently, while at the office or out of town, I find (to my dismay) that I need to access files on my desktop computer at home. The inevitable results are special trips and wasted time. While I could leave my desktop on indefinitely and access files remotely as, the inordinate amount of electricity that it consumes literally doubles my electric bill. With the help of an Arduino, I've solved the problem for good, for the cost of about 3 months of running my desktop all day.
While I could leave my desktop on indefinitely and access files remotely as, the inordinate amount of electricity that it consumes literally doubles my electric bill.
You're correct that I live alone. My desktop is kind of a beast too--I need a lot of computing power for my research, and I designed my desktop accordingly.
I have a Core i7/EVGA x58 motherboard/12 gigs of DDR3 1600/GeForce GTX 285/700 Watt PSU. I'll probably upgrade the GPU when the 485 comes out, which will only increase the power consumption further. My research involves computations on huge matrices (up to 100,000 x 100,000) on the GPU, so graphics power is important.
No, I checked that before I started this project. Even if it did, I may have built this anyway, since the key exchange ensures that only I can start up my desktop (unless someone did a man in the middle attack and decoded the messages, but I'm not that paranoid). Getting through a NAT might be a problem too.
The force shutdown ability would also be impossible with wake up on LAN alone.
I have a Core i7/EVGA x58 motherboard/12 gigs of DDR3 1600/GeForce GTX 285/700 Watt PSU. I'll probably upgrade the GPU when the 485 comes out, which will only increase the power consumption further. My research involves computations on huge matrices (up to 100,000 x 100,000) on the GPU, so graphics power is important.
Okay, about the same as me then... I just got 6gb DDR3 from patriot with micron chips, ATI HD4870 1GB gfx, ASUS P6T mainboard, and a 1000W Enermax Galaxy psu
In the US the standard 120vac breaker spec is 15a. If the computer setup is using so much power I would think the the wall outlet breaker would be tripping when something else on the circuit was switched on. In a old house I lived in I had a microwave and a small 5000 btu window air conditioner on the same circuit and only one could be used one at a time.
So has anybody actually measured the real power useage of the pc and monitor?
Years ago, I did. This is what I found...
Computer was about 60W when it was full on. About the same as an incandescent light bulb. My impression is that remained constant through several computers (about the same as a light bulb). I suspect what was gained in energy efficiency was given up in speed increases. Our electric bill dropped by about two light bulbs when we switched to laptops.
The harddrive seemed to be the biggest sponge.
The monitor (I think it was 19") was about 30W full on. A blank screen (all black) consumed very little power and used just a tiny bit more power than "power saving mode".
At the very least, I don't think the magic packet would get through a network address translator. This system works even from separate LANs. The only requirement is that I configure my router to forward one specific port to the Arduino, so that my laptop can initiate communication. The other endpoint (the network that my laptop connects to) does not require any special configuration.
Think I want to play around with this too, but using WOL instead.
I can make my nas with the webserver access my pfSense router, where I got the mac mapped for WOL. Only problem is that I can't make it shut down by it.
To hack that system, they would either have to hack the apache web server or pfSense.
That's pretty cool. For me, the shutdown feature is necessary. Sometimes I log in to m desktop to work on research. My current project involves very large matrices (up to 100,000 x 100,000), so a bug in my code can cause a major crash.
