Wake-on-lan or equivalent?

Hello everyone, just started using Serviio for all my ripped movies etc.
My setup is, My main PC (running Serviio), and my WDTV which is my mail unit for watching movies.

Now.. I setup WinHelper to stop my PC from going to sleep (which works awesome by the way!). But i was wondering what my options would be... So have my computer host the media server, while on standby. Or be readily available when i want to stream from my TV which is downstairs from my PC.

Is WakeonLan an option?

Any suggestions are much appreciated!!
-Morg

[atc98092]

I'm not saying WOL couldn't work, but I doubt it. The main issue is the player needs to see an active DLNA server on the network. It doesn't store connection information, so if the computer is sleeping the player would not know what IP address to wake up.

My guess is what you are proposing would require the player to maintain its own connection table and a WOL client. I doubt there's anything that could be added to Serviio to provide that.

[DenyAll]

You could use a WOL client on another (non-DLNA) device, such as a smart phone or tablet. I do this, and also use it to "wake from Internet", for watching videos when away from home (via Mediabrowser). I use an app called "RemoteBoot" on my iDevices.

As atc states, having WOL triggered by your TV or other DLNA device would be up to the device to support. I've never heard of one that does it.

If you don't have a smart phone/tablet/PC handy then unfortunately you'll have to leave the server on... or get fitter running up and down stairs .

Better yet... Go to the bios of your machine (thats before your operating system boots up) and configure the WOL setting.

That way in case of hiberation or power outages, your server comes online.

Works wonders for me.

Thank you guys for the awesome responses. That is unfortunate about the device not supporting it (further investigation shows it doesn't).
I do have an iPhone... So I will check out that app.

Would it be worth looking into a cheap PC that could run the server 24/7? Something very simple and cheap. I doubt it needs much in the way of specs to stream?

[atc98092]

I run my computers 24/7, but they do generate some heat and use electricity.

As to the power necessary, it depends on if your devices can play the videos without transcoding. If so, the computer can be pretty low powered. Many NAS devices can run Serviio just fine, and they are not mega-powerful. I believe some people have used a Raspberry PI as the core.

But, if transcoding is necessary, and you have HD video, then more may be required. My test server (see my sig) serves all my SD files fine, but when feeding the Roku (needs transcoding for everything but MP4 files) I encounter buffering often. From my main server it doesn't happen, so it's processor dependent. So only you can make that call.

Remember that you can install Serviio on a simple Linux workstation, which would be less costly than buying a new computer with Windows installed. That way you could get better hardware, but you do need to have some computer knowledge to use Linux effectively.

Thanks! I will look around for some options on a workstation. I have used linux in the past and my roommate swears by it.. so he could always help..

I was also throwing around the idea that i could use WOL with my iphone to wake my main PC, which would void the need for a separate computer... and save on power.
Not sure if anyone has experience with it.. but i can't get it to work for the life of me.. from my iphone/android and even a laptop on my network.

What i've done to set this up.
- Bios enabled WOL
- Tired multiple drivers for my ethernet.
- Disabled fastboot
- enabled magic packets in device manager, as well as turned off "let this device go to sleep"
- Port forwarded port 7 & 9

I've followed multiple threads elsewhere to figure this out and can't get it to work for the life of me. Does anyone know some more troubleshooting tips?
Windows 10 FYI

Thanks!

[atc98092]

I played with WOL on older versions of Windows and never had much success, and this was as the network administrator with full rights over everything. Finally just left everything powered up. Since we were talking about close to 100 workstations across several locations, it could have saved a fair amount of electricity. But it was more important (to me) to ensure the computers were patched and anti-virus files updated.

[DenyAll]

I have it going but I did set it up a long time ago. Concentrate on getting WOL working within your LAN before going anywhere near trying to do it from the internet (if you even need that - your OP suggested it was only for upstairs).

I didn't think there was much to get going for WOL locally - set your BIOS up (usually under Power Management), set your WIC properties (Power Management tab) and disable fast boot if Windows 8 and presumably 10. That should be all there is to it. Use a client such as RemoteBoot to send a magic packet to the NIC (you need to set broadcast on, and enter the MAC address of your PC's WIC, into RemoteBoot) and it should fire your PC up. Dont worry about port forwarding your router or anything at the moment, its not needed for LAN only use.

There's lots of stuff to help on the web eg. http://its.uiowa.edu/support/article/901, http://www.howtogeek.com/192642/how-to- ... -internet/, or section 3 of this document: http://downloadeu1.teamviewer.com/docs/ ... LAN-en.pdf. Once you have the LAN working we can talk about from the internet (if needed).