Shutoff your HTPC when not in use!

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

[url=http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5139&Itemid=229]Original Article Link[/url]

Man, I’d love to, but the USB-UIRT doesn’t wake the PC in Windows 7 64-bit.

[Andrew Van Til]

Wouldn’t standby be a better option?  The difference in watts b/w S3 and S5 is usually just a couple, and it comes back up much faster.

[Naylia]

S3 is on my list of To Do’s…

[Lothar]

[quote=”babgvant”]
Wouldn’t standby be a better option?  The difference in watts b/w S3 and S5 is usually just a couple, and it comes back up much faster.
[/quote]

I would like to do suspend instead of shutdown but this was a quick and dirty implementation and I didn’t have time to find the right commands for suspend.  As I said in the blog post, suspend is an improvement that I plan to make.

[Lothar]

[quote=”Skirge01″]
[url=http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5139&Itemid=229]Original Article Link[/url]

Man, I’d love to, but the USB-UIRT doesn’t wake the PC in Windows 7 64-bit.
[/quote]

Since my backend is a dedicated server I don’t have to worry about that.  The shutdown process sets the BIOS wakeup time and it can also be woken up by WOL (Wake-On-LAN) from my frontends.  No direct input needed.  And of course I can just hit the power button on the front too if I wanted.  But since the server is hard to reach that’s not a great option for me.

[captain_video]

I’ve never set either my HTPC or main PC to sleep at any time.  I also have an unRAID server that does spin down the drives when not in use, but never sleeps.  Several TVs in my home use media extenders connected to my main HTPC via a home network.  I had to relent and give my wife her cable box back for the bedroom TV because she has zero patience for learning any new technology and WMC is not within her realm of tolerating.  If she had to wait even longer for the main HTPC to wake up I’d probably find the media extenders run over in the driveway.

[Anonymous]

lol @captain video. Sorry to hear…

I would *love* to have my HTPC sleep but the Highpoint RocketRaid card I have in there won’t have it. When the system resumes, it blares its alarm indicating the array isn’t detected 🙁 Still haven’t dedicated the time required to figure a work-around.

As for shutting it off completely, it would simply take too long to start up every time. S3 is my end-goal. One day.

[Lothar]

I was happy for quite some time leaving my system on 24/7 because the Mythtv backend is [i]super[/i] stable but it kept coming back to my power bill.  My wife is already used to waiting for a short period before she can watch TV because my frontend system currently also shuts down completely.  My old frontend would suspend but three times I had to RMA the motherboard because it wouldn’t wake up.  When I switched to this new frontend the suspend function didn’t work right and I haven’t put in enough time to figure out the problem yet.  Soon though.  But for now it’s a good thing because it’s ok if the TV isn’t instantly ready.  She’s used to it.  🙂

[htpc_user]

I have 2 PC’s that run 24/7…my server and my HTPC.  I wish that my HTPC would correctly do S3, but it doesn’t.  But as far as my power bill, before I had both running 24/7 and now that I do, I’ll bet there’s not $10 difference between the 2.  My power bill fluctuates from month to month, and it has much more to do with how hot or how cold it stays outside causing my air or heat to run.  That is what causes my power bill to stay in the $250/month range.

[erikt]

[quote=”Skirge01″]
[url=http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5139&Itemid=229]Original Article Link[/url]

Man, I’d love to, but the USB-UIRT doesn’t wake the PC in Windows 7 64-bit.
[/quote]
Email John.  This problem’s been fixed.
ET

[robinhoody]

I know the technology isnt quite there yet but soon it will be viable to put solar panels on our roofs and we wont have to worry as much about power consumption.

[erikt]

I use S3 for my front-end, however my server stays on 24/7.  All of the hard drives spin-down when not in use for ~20 minutes, and the OS is on an SSD.  I measured the total consumption with the ~9 drives spun down and it’s around 50-60W.  My backup machine sits off all week until midnight on Fridays when the server turns it on with a wake-on-lan packet, does the back-up, then shuts it off again.

ET

[Meester.Rip]

Will 360s wake the headend machine if they request a remote terminal session? I’d love to put my machine into sleep (THat is S3 right) if I knew my machine would wake up for scheduled recordings and when a 360 tries to connect as an extender.

[Andrew Van Til]

7MC will wake up for recordings, and I believe that the 360 will send a WOL packet to the HTPC when it tries to connect – I don’t think the other 7MC extenders will.

[htpc_user]

I tried to set up WOL on my server according to some instructions on here (I believe).  But every time that I would put it to sleep it would immediately wake back up.

[Author]

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