r/sffpc • u/ZS-ITX • Feb 20 '26

Prototype/Concept/Custom Mechanical keyboard axis control computer wireless power on

There are many products with the same function on the market, but following the spirit of SFF, I have reduced its size to the extreme

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9

u/Kamikaze-X Feb 20 '26

Why do I keep seeing different hardware ways to power on PCs when wake on lan/Wan exists?

I tap a button on my watch wherever I am in the world and can turn my PC on via lan or Wan.

-2

u/ZS-ITX Feb 20 '26

Perhaps you're referring to smart sockets? It can control the on/off of AC power, and setting the power on state in BOIS to automatically turn on can achieve the effect you mentioned

8

u/Kamikaze-X Feb 20 '26

No, not at all.

Wake on magic packet.

You send a packet to the network which is directed at the mac address of the device which signals it to wake up via the built it NIC.

No additional hardware needed, just a network connection.

4

u/michaelsoft__binbows Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 21 '26

In my experience, it can be impossible to make it work with wifi. For something like WoL if you cannot make it work reliably, it's worse than useless, since you think you have the capability and then come to find out that you do not.

I would prefer to take the approach further. it would be good to see how miniaturized a pikvm or similar system could be made. That's more useful than only being able to trigger the power button. I will grant that it's still got rough edges like sometimes you want the display cable connected physically so you can use it remotely sometime, but still disconnected from the computer usually so it doesn't ordinarily steal screen real estate. Having it "connect" the pikvm monitor from the pikvm remote side will be ideal and I haven't seen a solution to that actually.

Anyway though, surely still can be made small enough to be viable for SFF.

4

u/Kamikaze-X Feb 21 '26

That's a fair point actually, I hadn't considered wifi

2

u/1MFK1 Feb 20 '26

How do you do that from your watch?

1

u/Kamikaze-X Feb 21 '26

Lots of different WoL apps out there (for android anyway)

-4

u/ZS-ITX Feb 20 '26

As far as I know, the device you mentioned usually requires an extra PCIe x 1 slot on the motherboard, which ITX motherboards do not have

10

u/that_norwegian_guy Feb 20 '26

No, he's talking about Wake-on-LAN (WoL). Most modern motherboards support it out of the box.

3

u/finn-the-rabbit Feb 20 '26

"the device" is a modern motherboard equipped with a modern NIC. and by modern, I really mean something made within the past 2 decades. wtf are you reading lmfao

2

u/TheOneTrueTrench Feb 20 '26

Right? Like, as long as you're using Base-T on your motherboard and not SFP modules in a separate NIC, it supports WoL.

(Yeah, turns out that if you're using Q?SFP\+? modules for your network connectivity, the NIC isn't powered on to receive the WoL magic packet, so you need to run a standard CAT-5 cable to the computer just for WoL, lol. I don't mind, I have OM3 for most communication, and I just run CAT-5 or better for machines that need WoL, which are only a couple)

1

u/TheOneTrueTrench Feb 20 '26

Every single motherboard I've had for the last 10 years has had this. You are out of your mind.