Wake on LAN via Control4

January 26, 2011

Are using a computer to stream music or XBMC as a media player via Control4? So you don’t want to leave your computer fully powered 24/7, but don’t want to walk to the equipment room to turn it on to watch a movie or listen to music? Thanks to tisco you can now program Control4 to wake your networked computer from sleep mode.

This first step is to setup your computer. I’m going to use windows 7 and show how to configure the network card to allow it to wake your computer from sleep mode. You need to go to your control panel, then under network and internet, select view network status and tasks. On the new window that comes up select change adapter settings on the left. Find your local area connection, should have your network card listed under it also.

Make sure you have it plugged into your network so you can find it’s mac address. Click on it once to highlight it, then right click it and select status, then details. A box like this will appear.

I’ve cut off the right side which has my info. Look for physicial address, to the right of it you will have 12 numbers separated by hyphens. xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx. You need to enter this in composer HE or your dealer can in composer Pro. I’ll show you where later on in this write-up. Now back out of these screens till you get back to your local area connection. Right click and select properties this time. Now select configure. On the new window select the advanced tab. You should see something like this.

I highlighted the selection Wake on Magic Packet. This has to be enabled. Now select the power management tab. You should see a screen like this.

You need to check mark Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power. Now you can select the box below, Allow this device to wake the computer. Check it and now you can check mark the box below it that says only allow a magic packet to wake the computer. Once all these are checked select the ok button. This will then make the changes to your network card. It may go offline for a minute to do this.

Now we can load Composer HE and program it to send the magic packet to wake up your computer. Obviously your dealer has to have placed the driver into your project and gotten the liscense from tisco first. With Composer HE pulled up at the bottom left go to monitoring. Then at the top left find the driver. By default it’s labeled Wake on LAN Driver. Select the driver then at the top right make sure the tab says properties. This is what it will look like.

You will see a box called licensing status, make sure it’s validated or else this won’t work. Now remember that 12 number physical address I told you, you would need earlier on in this write-up? Enter it in one of the 10 mac address boxes. After you entered it make sure to hit the set button to the right to lock it in. I entered mine in with the hyphens but the driver info says you can do it without.

Now to program it to execute. At the bottom left go to programming, then at the top left find what you want to execute the magic packet. For testing purposes, I selected my living room. Then I selected the commmand below that and chose blue button. Then at the top right I went the wake on lan driver. Now at the bottom right you will see this.

At the bottom select the radio button next to Device Specific Command. Now below that select the drop down box and pick the mac address number that you entered your computer’s mac address next to earlier. Double click on the green arrow command above this or drag it to the middle.

So for a practical situation. You have your computer down in the basement equipment room in standby mode tied to an a/v switch. You are in the living room and want to watch a movie using your XBMC media player (thanks to Alan Chow’s great work). Press the blue button on the remote and your computer will wake up out of standby. Now you can go to watch on your GUI and select movies and find a movie to select. You may want to throw in a conditional that says if the living room is off and the blue button is pressed. That way if you are watching your satellite and you want to use the blue button for it, you won’t needlessly turn on your computer also.

Hope you enjoyed
pharmdsmith
Paul J. Smith
paul.smith@thesohoshop.com
Programmer for The SOHO Shop

if you have any questions or are looking for a programmer don’t hesitate to email/call us.