WOL project

edited December 2014 in Hardware
In the past I have had issues with my NAS and WOL. Let alone I hate having a system run idling wasting power. Since I have been trying to find something to use my arduino for a project I decided to use it for a NAS system. I retired the old NAS due to hard drive failure and memory issues so the so called new system is just a bunch of old parts slapped together let alone to test my theory. The project is simple, a arduino with a ethernet shield to control the NAS to power on and off. All the guides I have found call for a solid state relay or to modify the power switch that only works 50% of the time. My idea is simple and I have bench tested it. Since we all know on a PC ATX style power supply that if you ground out the green wire with a random black wire on the 20/24 pin molex block you can force the power supply to turn on. Well what happens when it is connected to a running motherboard? Im theory it should work. Well sure enough it does work. When you reconnect the green wire back the system turns back on. Reason for that is the ATX form factor uses a 5 volt standby and uses a power latching scheme for the power switch, IE a soft touch power switch. In other words the circuit is still closed. So this can be used to control power on and off. Also I can tap into the 5 volt supply and use it to power the arduino with out using a wall wart. Now this works great remotely and will help the light bill. I'll have to add a bypass switch however for large files since I plan to have a 10 minute timer for when the system is fully booted to when it shuts back down. Just need it on long enough to backup some small files. I hate the cloud and don't trust it.

Comments

  • So this is just a backup target? If so, then I guess that makes sense. Otherwise, having the NAS turn on and off whenever you access doesn't sound all that efficient to me.

    Also, NAS devices from the likes of Synology are usually pretty good in terms of power consumption. They use less power than a light bulb.
  • Yea a backup target is more like it. Tomorrow im going to do a full scale test.
  • So this is just a backup target? If so, then I guess that makes sense. Otherwise, having the NAS turn on and off whenever you access doesn't sound all that efficient to me.

    Also, NAS devices from the likes of Synology are usually pretty good in terms of power consumption. They use less power than a light bulb.

    hashmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
    _______
    Arslan
  • Yea if you have a real NAS but a old desktop running say FreeNAS can eat up a lot of power.
  • arslan1 wrote:
    So this is just a backup target? If so, then I guess that makes sense. Otherwise, having the NAS turn on and off whenever you access doesn't sound all that efficient to me.

    Also, NAS devices from the likes of Synology are usually pretty good in terms of power consumption. They use less power than a light bulb.

    hashmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
    _______
    Arslan

    And the point of that post was...?
  • It made my head hurt.
  • BlueSun wrote:
    arslan1 wrote:
    blatantly copied post

    And the point of that post was...?

    That looks like a copy/paste spammer bot. They usually target boards that only automatically check the first 5-20 posts for spamyness. Once they get past that, they unleash the real spam.
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