HTPC - turn PC on/off using any remote

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aucklander

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#25631 27-Aug-2008 15:00

Hi!

I do not think this was solved yet, unless you buy a $400 case... If there is a way, please let me know as I am keen to have this sorted out.

Let's assume there is a module you can install inside the PC, with an IR sensor. You can program the module to react to a specific button on your remote (any remote!). Basically, you teach the module to recognise one button only. The module will act as another switch in parallel with the case switch. Press that button on the remote and is like pressing the Start button on the case.

I do not see a need for shutdown, as Media Portal can shutdown computer at a press of a button on the remote - I reconfigured the Power button on my Hauppauge 45 buttons to do this. I am sure other PVR applications have same functionality, as well.

Did anyone come accross such module?
Assuming it is available, how much would be a reasonable price?
Please post what you think it would worth (DIY installation).

mobo Intel DH55PJ, RAM: 4GB RAM, Nova-T 500 HD + Avermedia Trinity tuner card, Geforce 520 video, 120GB SSD Sandisk + 640 WD + 1000SG, Win7 Home Prem 64-bit, Media Portal 1.15.0; BTC 9019URF Cordless Keyboard, Panasonic 55" (HDMI cable), HTPC Case Silverstone Grandia GD05B.

sbiddle

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#160174 27-Aug-2008 15:27

The standard MCE remote works fine for turning your PC on/off.

Virtually every bios supports power on via keyboard and since the MCE remote is just a USB keyboard it will work perfectly. On some boards you just need to configure a jumper or bios to support +5VSB.

aucklander

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#160184 27-Aug-2008 15:38

can you buy the remote by itself? complete with the receiver?

but then I end up with another remote, pretty much useless, as I do not run MCE, and the tv tuner came with a remote, operating very well under MediaPortal.

sbiddle

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#160200 27-Aug-2008 16:14

aucklander: can you buy the remote by itself? complete with the receiver?

but then I end up with another remote, pretty much useless, as I do not run MCE, and the tv tuner came with a remote, operating very well under MediaPortal.

Yes the MCE remote comes with the remote and IR receiver for around ~$60 or so but does appear to have some supply issues at present having read a few other posts.

The MCE remote works fine under Media Portal and potentially gives you more features than your TV tuner remote. It doesn't need XP or Vista MCE to operate.

Dingbatt

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#160218 27-Aug-2008 16:49

Just to confirm... The MCE remote wakes the HTPC or starts it?

I have just bought a Genius Remote 300 which is a MCE remote clone. Because it has a USB receiver it can be used to wake my HTPC. It operates in MediaPortal quite effectively but as I am running VistaHP certain button pushes were causing Media Center to start in the background and then pester me because I haven't bothered setting it up.
At the moment the only way I have successfully stopped it from doing it is to kill ehtray.exe in the task manager. But every reboot regenerates it. There is a registry hack that kills it permanently but I'm a little reluctant to mess with the registry, particularly with one of the core MS applications.

As far as extra remotes go, the Genius is learnable and has selections for TV AV andn AUX.

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eXDee

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#160219 27-Aug-2008 16:55

If you have a process running on startup you dont want then google Autoruns, good for removing the auto starting crap from nero, cyberlink etc and auto updaters. You want to checkout the Logon tab.

Regs

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Snowflake

#160233 27-Aug-2008 17:55

Dingbatt: Just to confirm... The MCE remote wakes the HTPC or starts it?

either wake, or both , depending on what sort of IR Receiver you have.

the IR Receiver in my Zalman case always has power supplied to it so it can start the machine from a shutdown state. If you have a USB receiver that is connected to a USB header which has no power connected then it may not be "ON" to receive IR signals when your PC is shutdown

NOTE: the remotes/receivers that come with some cards - eg hauppauge nova-s - are not necessarily MCE remotes and they are usually connected to the PCI card which probably wont have power when your PC is asleep or shut down therefore you are unlikely to be able to use one of these to turn your machine back on...

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eXDee

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#160246 27-Aug-2008 18:52

Trying to get this going...
My M3N78-EMH HDMI Has a jumper for 5v, and you can either do S1 wakeup or S3/S4 depending on how you set it. It's S1 by default so i changed it to S3, now the MCE Remote wakes from sleep, but not from power off. Interestingly the LED flashed on the receiver before i changed the jumper when the power was off, and now it doesn't flash at all. Ah well, i don't think i'll be using anything other than hibernate/sleep.

FreddyK

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#160252 27-Aug-2008 19:20

Out of interest, I hooked my HTPC up to a power meter and did some measurements. When at sleep, it uses 16watts of power and shutting it down completely still uses 12watts of power. Since then I dont bother shutting it down anymore since the benefits of waking from sleep far out weight any savings 4watts will make.

Drawing 12watts when a system is meant to be off is a bit of a downer though.

MediaBox - CASE: Antec Fusion V2 with 430W ATX PSU, MOTHERBOARD: Foxconn 6150K8MA-8KRS , CPU: AMD64 X2 4200+ with fanless Scythe Ninja Mini cooler, RAM: 2 Gig DDR400, HDD: 1 X 1Tb & 2 X 320Gb, TV TUNER: 1x Hauppauge WinTV Nova T 500 HD card & 1x Hauppauge WinTV-PVR150MCE, VIDEOCARD: XFX 8500GT passive cooling, DISPLAY: Panasonic TX32LX700A LCD TV, SOUND: Logitech Z-5500, SOFTWARE: Windows 7 Ultimate x86.

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Snowflake

#160268 27-Aug-2008 20:43

FreddyK: Out of interest, I hooked my HTPC up to a power meter and did some measurements. When at sleep, it uses 16watts of power and shutting it down completely still uses 12watts of power. Since then I dont bother shutting it down anymore since the benefits of waking from sleep far out weight any savings 4watts will make.

Drawing 12watts when a system is meant to be off is a bit of a downer though.

did you try disabling things like Wake On Lan (WOL) in bios? when the PC is off the onboard network adaptor will still be powered on for WOL. 12 watts sounds a lot though....

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FreddyK

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#160283 27-Aug-2008 21:43

I never use WOL. My case has a VFD displaying time so thats drawing some current. My much more powerful PC (not my HTPC) draws 15w when its shutdown so Im guessing this is pretty typical. My LCD monitor draws nothing in standby (well, virtually nothing), yet my LCD TV draws 20w when its in standby. As you might have guessed, I've pretty much plugged everthing I can into this meter

Dingbatt

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#160410 28-Aug-2008 11:17

eXDee: If you have a process running on startup you dont want then google Autoruns, good for removing the auto starting crap from nero, cyberlink etc and auto updaters. You want to checkout the Logon tab.

I know it is a little off-thread but thanks for the tip about Autoruns. It has allowed me to clear a bit of dross during startup but ehtray refused to die! In the end I had to go CMD line and kill it in its home. So far so good. Although it took me an hour to get the cmd line parameters correct.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996