Thread: Is it possible to build a WOL dongle?

Guys,

Here's something I put together about 2 years ago but never took to production. It's called the CarNetix CNX-PWOL and is designed to wake a sleeping laptop by exercising the Wake-on-Link feature that *some* ethernet chipsets implement. The problem we ran into was, very few laptops seemed to have the Wake-on-Link feature (many have the Wake-on-Lan "majic packet" feature, but not Wake-on-Link). The link above tells you where to look for the feature in your laptop.

I'd love to hear from you guys on how many of you have laptops that include Wake-on-Link. If there is enough interest we may resurrect this project.

Here are a couple of photos with the CNX-PWOL prototype. It includes an RJ-45 input, RJ-45 outout (pass through), an ACPI input, and a battery input to run a small relay. It is shown here with the P2140 and PSUmoni software on an IBM laptop. The PSUmoni issues a "hibernate" command to the laptop via the USB connection to put the laptop into sleep mode. The PWOL shorts two pins on the RJ-45 to wake the laptop.

There's another possible "non-solder" solution for laptop users. Take a look at this thread and let me know if your laptop has this feature (mine does not).

Let me know what you think.

So...is the reason you didn't try to wake on lan magic packet because the circuitry was too expensive to make a reasonably priced product? Most everyone has WOL but doesn't seem like everyone has wake on link.

Theres always the option of getting an external keyboard with a power button on it and hacking up its power button.

You bet. This was just a question about a possible non-solder or hack solution.

Originally Posted by MikeH

Guys,

Here's something I put together about 2 years ago but never took to production. It's called the CarNetix CNX-PWOL and is designed to wake a sleeping laptop by exercising the Wake-on-Link feature that *some* ethernet chipsets implement. The problem we ran into was, very few laptops seemed to have the Wake-on-Link feature (many have the Wake-on-Lan "majic packet" feature, but not Wake-on-Link). The link above tells you where to look for the feature in your laptop.

I'd love to hear from you guys on how many of you have laptops that include Wake-on-Link. If there is enough interest we may resurrect this project.

Here are a couple of photos with the CNX-PWOL prototype. It includes an RJ-45 input, RJ-45 outout (pass through), an ACPI input, and a battery input to run a small relay. It is shown here with the P2140 and PSUmoni software on an IBM laptop. The PSUmoni issues a "hibernate" command to the laptop via the USB connection to put the laptop into sleep mode. The PWOL shorts two pins on the RJ-45 to wake the laptop.

There's another possible "non-solder" solution for laptop users. Take a look at this thread and let me know if your laptop has this feature (mine does not).

Let me know what you think.

My work laptop is a Dell Latitude 600 and it has the Broadcom netxtreme gigabit 57xx card. It only supports wake up capabilities.

Originally Posted by Bugbyte

You bet. This was just a question about a possible non-solder or hack solution.

Yeah, I figured there must be plenty of people who would rather not hack up a laptop but have no problem hacking up a keyboard.

http://www.avrportal.com/?page=avrnet

That would essentially do it, just change the uC to look for a button press to send a packet like that. That's about $40 worth of parts, I'm actually working on a design of something very similar which will have a WOL option.

Here's exactly what you are asking for, a WOL dongle with a single-sided PCB layout, BOM and source code for the Atmel AVR ATmega8 microcontroller.
It triggers a WOL from a simple switch input. You just have to pull the SW input to GND to trigger the WOL. If you need to trigger it from a 12V logic high input instead of a logic low input you could just add a generic NPN transistor and a couple of resistors to invert the 12V input signal and prevent the 12V overvoltage to enter the 3.3V logic circuit at the SW input.

Project website: http://rototron.info/default.aspx?Page=WOL/WOL.aspx
Forum discussion: http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?n...wtopic&t=55564

Oh awesome, I think ima make myself one of these