Laptop Startup/Shutdown controller

jonee · 01-06-2005, 06:19 AM

I searched through this forum but it suprised me that there doesn't seem to be a startup/shutdown controller for a laptop.

Having it's own battery is the big advantage why I'd opt for a laptop. Is there no clean way to have a laptop startup/shutdown together with the car's ignition?

BTW: Running a bicycle brake harness through my car to remotely 'push' the laptop's power button seems a bit 'unclean' to me (nice try though).

Scouse Monkey · 01-06-2005, 06:26 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by jonee

I searched through this forum but it suprised me that there doesn't seem to be a startup/shutdown controller for a laptop.

yeah there is.... http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...6&page=1&pp=15 look harder - there are nmore ideas!

Quote: Originally Posted by jonee

BTW: Running a bicycle brake harness through my car to remotely 'push' the laptop's power button seems a bit 'unclean' to me (nice try though).

I actually thought it looked quite cool the way the guy did it. Personally if i didn't have a port replicator with switch though i would just put a connector on the side of my laptop that i could connect a remote switch to as well as the circuit in the thread above.

jonee · 01-07-2005, 05:59 AM

Well, i did read that post.
But my electronical skills don't reach that far. So starting from an existing controller and tweaking it a little or a lot is not really possible for me.

I would be interested to know how you could make a laptop auto-resume when it detects power.

Scouse Monkey · 01-07-2005, 06:53 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by jonee

I would be interested to know how you could make a laptop auto-resume when it detects power.

Basically - no! the laptop has a battery so they never have this feature on the bios. You could use a WOL signal though. have a go making the controller circuit - you may as well learn. Simplest way would be to set the laptop to standby when power lost. Then set it to hibernate after so long or at a certain power level as a second step. Then use a simple pulse relay to send a startup pulse to the button when you turn ont he ignition and the power supply but you would have to disable the button from doing ANYTHING when the laptop is turned on or it will go off/standbay everytime you start the car and it is already on. Otherwise just set the power settings as i advised before and use a manual switch.

BMW DZYN · 01-15-2005, 12:47 AM

what would be the solution using a dock?

Squid · 01-15-2005, 02:16 AM

My solution to powering up and down my laptop was thru using 555 timer IC's...
Only problem for you tho is that I opened my laptop up and soldered extra wires to
the power switch and ran them outside to let it be controlled by the circuitry.
I removed my screen and this is a permanent install, so I didn't care.. but I've seen
someone else on the forum do the same mod but put a nice r/c connector on the side
so he could continue to use the laptop outside the car cleanly and just plug the
switch in when in car.

I provide constant power to my circuit and when it see's a high signal (ignition on) it
waits 6 seconds (car starting & laptop beginning its charging state) then "presses" the
power button for 1 second. When the signal goes low, ignition off,
the circuit waits again for 10 seconds in case I want to turn key back on or so... if not
the button is "pressed" for 1 second to put Win XP in its shutdown mode.

In the power schemes in XP you can choose to make your power button do whatever..
hibernate, standby, shutdown... so I can make it work however I want.

Feel free to goto my site in my signature to see my mess of circuitry..
(I went thru so many rev's and bandages until I got it right

)

Long post.. hope the info gives you some ideas!

BMW DZYN · 01-15-2005, 11:36 AM

question on the laptop power on/off circuit.

Can this be made to work with a dock? If so how?

ALso, when u say u built the circuit, you mean on an actual computer chip?..(pardon my ignorance over the subject.=( )

Quote: Originally Posted by Squid

My solution to powering up and down my laptop was thru using 555 timer IC's...
Only problem for you tho is that I opened my laptop up and soldered extra wires to
the power switch and ran them outside to let it be controlled by the circuitry.
I removed my screen and this is a permanent install, so I didn't care.. but I've seen
someone else on the forum do the same mod but put a nice r/c connector on the side
so he could continue to use the laptop outside the car cleanly and just plug the
switch in when in car.

I provide constant power to my circuit and when it see's a high signal (ignition on) it
waits 6 seconds (car starting & laptop beginning its charging state) then "presses" the
power button for 1 second. When the signal goes low, ignition off,
the circuit waits again for 10 seconds in case I want to turn key back on or so... if not
the button is "pressed" for 1 second to put Win XP in its shutdown mode.

In the power schemes in XP you can choose to make your power button do whatever..
hibernate, standby, shutdown... so I can make it work however I want.

Feel free to goto my site in my signature to see my mess of circuitry..
(I went thru so many rev's and bandages until I got it right

)

Long post.. hope the info gives you some ideas!

Squid · 01-15-2005, 12:05 PM

Yea I put together the circuits... I mean they are all pre-existing circuits...
I just combined them in a way that gets what I wanted...

Went from trying to use all relays and realized that was a mess...
then half circuits and relays.. got better.. then finally booted it all and redid with all circuits...
came out ugly tho since so many bandaids and rip aparts over the months..

So someday if I'm REALLY REALLY bored.. I may redo it all on one board and clean.

Here is the shutdown timer... works along with the car ignition and the laptop's PS2 port...

You can see the rest of the messy stuff at my link in my sig...

Squid · 01-15-2005, 12:07 PM

Oh and to make it work with a dock, you would just hack into the docks power button...

I assume that would work... I've actually never had a docking station for the 3 laptops I've owned!

BMW DZYN · 01-15-2005, 03:24 PM

squid..

Hey man, read your work under ur signiture, seems like one hell of a project!
Hes the thing, I dont exactly know what, within that "big" project box of yours, I will need to asseble to have my lil' project work.

Is it just the chip you posted in the thread?

In other words, I take a wire from ignition and run it to that chip in the thread and run that to my laptop/dock power button?

I dunno, im confused, and a little discouraged
...

and what am i looking at for price?

Squid · 01-16-2005, 01:15 AM

That chip is the 555 timer IC, but you need all the accompanying components to make it work.

I used 3 of them... one for startup .. one for shutdown... and another for the delay in case
I wanted to turn the suv back on... depending on what you wanna do, you'd need 1 or 2.
There are startup/shutdown controllers out there that could do this for u... if your willing
to spend the $$$$.

A simple "non-circuit" way to do it is to just hack the power button and just connect
it to a momentary switch up front... that way you can just remotely control it.

huafist · 01-16-2005, 08:33 PM

I've designed one specifically for laptops that don't use the power switch to make things happen - mine's designed more for people that have gutted their laptops and are building it into the car. Unfortunately, as the designs sit right now you still have to solder two leads to the motherboard. I'm debating writing a piece of software and making it completely plug & play.

omar · 01-16-2005, 08:53 PM

I'm using a laptop in my car without a docking station. I just soldered two wires to my power button. My setup is very simple. To power on the laptop, I'm using the 'one-shot' circuit I got from the hardware forum. Total cost was $7.00 (capacitor, relay and resitor). For shutdown I wrote a program that runs at startup in the background.

The program monitors for power. Once the car is turned off, It will see it's on battery and start counting for 30seconds (this can be any set time). After 30 seconds it hibernates(or suspend) the laptop. If it see's power before the 30 second countdown, it'll stop the count and continue to monitor. Haven't had a problem yet. If anyone wants the program let me know and I'll post it.

Squid · 01-16-2005, 09:23 PM

Using the Power Options in the control panel.. you can just set the laptop to shut down...
I have that set also on mine... 2 schemes.. plug-in & battery... plug-in is
always on.. and battery is set to 1 min...

So when i shut suv off.. laptop goes to battery.. new config comes into play and shuts
down laptop in 1 min. No software necessary. This is in XP.

omar · 01-16-2005, 09:32 PM

I tried the power options also. It did'nt work for me. It will only hibernate/suspend if the cpu's idle. If music/video is playing, it does'nt detect it as being idle, so it would never automatically hibernate. I'm not using a very high power laptop (hp zt1135 1.2ghz celeron - winxp sp2), so whatever threshold xp thinks idle should be, my latpop wasn'tt. That's why I needed a program, plus I wanted more control over the shutdown period ( less than one minute).