INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 17 => Topic started by: ajowers on May 25, 2012, 01:04:18 pm

Title: How to Remotely "power up" my media center (ie from the network/internet)
Post by: ajowers on May 25, 2012, 01:04:18 pm

Hi,

I have MC17 installed on my htpc.  LAst time I used it I pressed the sleep button on the remote.  Suppose I now wish it was turned on.  Is there a way I can remotely turn it on?

My main board is the Zotac NM10 Atom dual core.

Will I need a wake on LAN or something like this?  How does that work?  What would be nice is if when I launched Gizmo on my droid it could somehow wake up my htpc at home so I can connect to it.

One other unrelated question:  I use FLAC only for the audio.  Some of my files are the 24bit 88/96/192khz encodings.  As a test I used MC to burn a CD from these FLACS and it worked.  Does the software reencode them to 16bit 44.1 khz ? Is this purely a digital recode? and are there any settings dealing with quality on the reencode?  I am actually amazed that it does this but I wanted to know more about it.

Thanks,
Anthony

Title: Re: How to Remotely "power up" my media center (ie from the network/internet)
Post by: drmimosa on May 25, 2012, 02:15:50 pm

Wake on LAN should work without a problem over your local network,

For wake on WAN, the Android version of Gizmo sends a wake request to the server each time it tries to connect.

The bad news is that it is tricky to set up: you have to set up wake requests to pass through your router's firmware and firewall and go directly to port 9 on you server computer.

The setup varies according to your router and firmware.

I had to configure my router to allow port forwarding to the broadcast ip address. In order to even access a broadcast ip address with my router I had to change the network's subnet mask to 255.255.255.128, which allowed me port forwarding on the broadcast ip address of 192.168.0.127; then I needed to have a wired Ethernet connection to the server. Oh, you also have to tweak the windows settings a bit to allow wake requests.

This thread from MC16 may help:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=63581.msg425079#msg425079

I remember a lot of google searches for wake on WAN helped as well. This link was also helpful for figuring out the broadcast ip address stuff:

http://www.subnet-calculator.com/

The good news is, once you figure how to configure your hardware/firmware, it just works! I've been sending wake requests now for two years from Gizmo with no problems.

Title: Re: How to Remotely "power up" my media center (ie from the network/internet)
Post by: ajowers on May 25, 2012, 03:07:48 pm

Thanks.  Right now my htpc uses DHCP but I suppose I will have to assign a static IP then do the port forwarding stuff.  I would prefer not to have to change the subnet mask.

I will study that other topic for more details.  I am hoping my MB has the wake on lan option in the bios.  Surely it does.  I am using the "wired" LAN port now.