Thread: Very nice!

No, miniSpark won't supply the power to the laptop. Actually, that was our original concept and the device you see in our Demo Video was designed to do just that. The cost to build that device, however, was very significant. So we decided to focus on an initial product that is a bit simpler and cheaper to produce. In the future we may revisit the possibility of making a full-featured power device with all the bells and whistles (voltage/temp monitoring, etc ...)

You are correct that the laptop has to stay powered. But the beauty of using WOL over say a USB wake device is that you can completely shut down the PC. You are not in StandBy or Hibernate so the power consumption will be significantly reduced (less than 1 Watt). We have not run into any car battery draining issues in our tests to date.

You could also use a Power Supply unit that can monitor the state of the car battery and disconnect power if necessary.


Thanks for your interest. We look forward to launching our product for sale as soon as our final testing is complete.

Originally Posted by JohnWPB

Wow this looks like a great alternative to taking apart a laptop to tap into the power switch.

I do have one question though, will it control the power from the car to the laptop? For the laptop to receive the WOL signal, the laptop would have to have power. Won't this run down the battery leaving the laptop powered all the time?

Obviously the laptop is not hooked to the ignition, otherwise it would shut off instantly when the key is turned off.

You're very welcome. Our founder started the company after he got fed up with dealing with all the problems in his Car PC system. We really couldn't find anything out there that satisfied our desire for a clean configurable solution. WOL & Ethernet connectivity seemed like such an elegant solution for StartUp/Shutdown and each of configurability. Allot of effort was spent on the Application GUI & our custom API which replaces the need to jumper the board and turn Potentiometers like some other products out there.

Originally Posted by JohnWPB

thanks for the reply, was just wondering more of the capabilities and such. It sounds like it is going to be a useful product for laptop users for sure.

What are the differencies compared to the Carnetix series - except that Carnetix seems slightly more expensive?

Originally Posted by upspace

What are the differencies compared to the Carnetix series - except that Carnetix seems slightly more expensive?

The CarNetix products for the most part are Power Regulators and not StartUp/Sutdown Controllers. The only exception to that statement is the CNX-P2140 which has a USB connection on it. It provides some StartUp/Shutdown capability but it utilizes a USB Wake not an Ethernet Wake-On-LAN packet.

The advantage of WOL is that you can shut-down a PC completely (low power consumption) and still turn it on by sending the WOL packet. USB Wake I believe forces the PC to stay in StandBy.

Our product is intended to be used in conjunction with a power regulator or in a car environment where the PC is already powered. We offer the convenience of controlling when/how the PC is turned on/off (two General Purpose Inputs are provided that you can wire to anything you want). This means no hacking into a PC to wire into its Power Button or having to jumper our board to customize on/off delays. It's all done thru our Custom Application Software.

Nice product. I just went to your site to checked it out. The product overall is very nice but is the price mention the set price? Are you guys going to developed different or lower priced for like cars, home, boats. etc.... I would be interested in installings these on cars I work with.

Hi Mike,

I was just trying to point out some differences between our products for the member who asked that specific question. I was not trying to post unsolicited comments or trying to give a complete bullet by bullet comparison. I knew about the P2140 and that's why I mentioned it. I apologize for not knowing about the P1900 and for any inaccuracies in my statements about your products.

What I intended to convey is that the major difference in our products is WOL. This allows us to completely shutdown the PC and wake up without having to use the ACPI connector or control the power to the PC.

Originally Posted by MikeH

M3Sharif,

Sorry, but I feel compelled to respond to several inaccuracies in your comments about the CarNetix products.


Not true. The two major CarNetix products (P1900 and P2140) are DC-DC regulators which include full-featured integrated startup/shutdown controllers. The P2140 includes a graphic user interface (PSUMoni) that allows real-time monitoring and control over all startup & shutdown functions, as does your product.

Not true. The P2140 includes a *full featured* startup/shutdown controller and provides two control interfaces: contact closure (ACPI power switch) *and* USB. It does not include a LAN Magic Packet control interface as your product does. However, the startup/shutdown controller includes nearly all of the features listed on your website:
1. Graphic-based Software Tools for User Configuration & System Monitoring (PSUMoni)
2. PC Start-Up Control via ACPI Connector, or by utilizing "Resume after power is restored" in BIOS
3. PC Shut-Down or Hibernate Control via USB Command Packet or ACPI Connector
4. Programmable Start-up/Shut-down delay for both the Primary output and Secodary outputs
5. PC Lock-Up Detector - not provided in P2140
6. Firmware upgrade capable
7. Drives two independent 12Volt DC relays for sequencing other electronics - not provided by P2140 as separate relays but controls included for primary output, secondary output, and P5V add-on control. Also includes a separate Delay-On control for turning on audio amp after user-defined delay.
8. Monitors two independent inputs which can be used for Start-Up/Shut-Down control or driving the relay outputs -the two independent CarNetix inputs are Ignition and "Pulse Start".
9. CarNetix Application Programming Interface (API) provided to allow you to integrate PSUMoni functionality into custom software applications. Originally released on 4/11/08.
The P2140 allows full shutdown (Hibernate, no current being consumed by the PC) *or* Standby of the PC either via the ACPI *or* USB interface. Wake up can be achieved either by using the ACPI interface or by setting the PC BIOS to "resume after power is restored". We do not promote the use of USB wake since, as you mentioned, it does require the PC to remain in Standby mode which tends to drain the user's battery. Your product allows the additional functionality of WOL, which the P2140 does not provide.

I hope this helps clarify things for you and your customers.

Is this application only works with a laptop? I was interested in getting a acer nettop which powers exactly like a laptop through a power brick..so if were to use a dc power adapter and thinking of this here..will it work the same?