Power Settings - 2 HTPC
#1
I've searched through other power settings threads and not found the info I'm looking for.

My set-up right now is 2 near identical HTPC's, one in the media room and one in the bedroom. The main one (media room) has the vast majority of all media on it but is getting full so I built a second unit for both playability and expanded storage. Both are running Windows 8.1 64 bit and both have XBMX Frodo 12.0. Each maintains their own library with the main scraped from local .nfo files created when I use my home PC to obtain media info from over the network.

What I would like to work out is how to have both machines power down when neither are in use but wake up easily when I use my remote or when one machine is looking for the network location of the other.

Currently my main system rarely powers down and the bedroom system will hibernate? after about 20 minutes of inactivity. However I have to physically press the power button to 'wake' it back up. It won't turn on when the main system goes looking for network locations (and thus means scraping and cleaning the library becomes an issue).

So which options, both in XBMC and Windows, should I be using? The bedroom system I'd like to shut down after at most 20 minutes of non-use. The main system can be longer.
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#2
Do a search for Wake on LAN. You'll need to enable it in hardware (likely in the BIOS unless it's an addon card) as well as install a plugin for Frodo.

Check out Advanced Wake on LAN in the Addons section. Also note the wiki on this page as it has some instructions/info.

Also, it looks like the soon upcoming release (Gotham) includes support for this. At least according to the wiki entry I found when I searched. There are nightly builds available for this version, so you could try running it in portable mode if you wanted to experiment with it.

I've not played with wake on lan in a long time, so I don't recall if or how well it will work with waking a PC from hibernate/sleep/off/whatever.

You don't note any issues with resuming from suspend/hibernate, so I'm assuming you have no problems with the PC's waking up and XBMC working correctly.

Sorry, forgot to note that this doesn't address waking up the PC's from a remote. Just one PC waking the other device up. For the waking with using a remote control I can't help.

Good luck.
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#3
Thanks for the reply. I've been playing with WOL however finding a way to have XBMC always run as an administrator in Windows 8.1 isn't simple. At the moment my main PC sleeps after a certain time and wakes up with a mouse move or keyboard click. My bedroom PC goes into hibernation though and I need to press the power button to wake it locally. Would be nice to just use my mouse/keyboard/MCE remote.

The other issue I have is being ale to wake the PC in the other room only if/when I want media from it. If I'm playing something locally I don't need the other PC on full time but if I then want to watch something stored remotely it would be cool if, upon selecting that media the WOL worked to wake the other PC. Sending continues wake-up packs will just keep both PCs on endelssly and I do like to conserve some power.

I know Gotham has a change so when you scan your library with network sources and then clean it won't remove items that exist on a sleeping server. That's good since I have media on both PC's. Would be great if just scanning or playing media could send the wake ups as well though.
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#4
I had a similar setup to what you have for a while... but in the end I just decided it was easier to build a dedicated Windows PC to store my media.

I never really delete anything, so it was just better in my case to build a dedicated PC with lots of storage. Currently that PC runs 24/7 as it does some other things like it's the PC I use for all of my downloading, and stores more than just my media. It doesn't really use that much power, the monitor is always off, and the drives power down when not in use. I administer it remotely for the most part so I never need to turn on the monitor. It's a basic PC with onboard everything, it doesn't need any high end hardware to just serve files.

And if you built a dedicated PC, and only using it for storing media, and watching in the evenings you could remote boot that PC in the evening or have it come online based on a schedule. And if you don't need it to run windows you could get one of the linux based NAS' they have fairly small power consumption.
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#5
Got things sorted out. Both HTPC are set in XBMC to 'Suspend' after a period of time. The main unit after an hour of non-use. The bedroom unit after 10 minutes. Both now go to sleep on their own if I don't do anything with them. I've also got both set up with Advanced WOL so when I wake up one it wakes up the other. The only thing I'd like is to be able to send a WOL packet when I scan my library from my main unit to ensure the bedroom unit wakes up, and when I clean the library. Plus if something in my library is located on that second unit but it's asleep sending a WOL packet when selecting play would be awesome as well.

I've also configured both my Harmony One remotes with a Power soft button to wake each unit from sleep. This works well if I'm laying in bed and doze off during a show or movie only to wake up and want to carry on where I feel asleep. I can remotely turn on the TV and wake up the HTPC right back into XBMC and get watching again. When I fall asleep again, if I fail to set the sleep timer on the TV, once the HTPC goes to sleep the TV will auto-shut off after 5 minutes of no signal. Now if only I could set up the audio receiver to do the same!
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#6
OK a new issue has cropped up. In the bedroom I have the HTPC connected to a receiver via HDMI, then out to the TV. I watch movies at night in bed but don't want equipment staying on all night making noise and light in the room so I use the sleep timers on both the TV and receiver. Before I got the receiver set up I just had a direct HDMI connection to the TV and used that sleep timer. When the TV shut off XBMC would finish running the video then wait for further input until it reached the shut down timers and put the pc to sleep. Now though when the receiver goes to sleep it causes XBMC to register some audio glitch making the video run jerkingly for hours and hours. When I switch the TV and receiver back on I can see XBMC trying to stutter it's way through the video. This of course fails to finish playing the video and run the sleep course on both the HTPC in my bedroom and the main unit if that is where the video is streaming from. Is there some way to fix this, so XBMC doesn't go all glitchy when the receiver shuts off?
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#7
OK I corrected the latest issue. Changed the audio output from WASAPI to Direct HDMI and now there's no glitching when the receiver shuts off. Yay!
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