How to remote 'power on' my Mac?

[honkyjonk]

I have my Mac tower placed with some other noisy gear in a crawl space to eliminate any noise whatsoever in the control room.

However, I didn't think about it until afterward, there's no way to power it on, without getting in there. I don't have one of those monitors that has the power button on it.

Anyway, anybody have a cheap and easy solution they can think of?

[RoyMatthews]

Actually I don't think there's any real way to do this.

I would consider keeping it on but putting it to sleep when not in use. I can understand that might not be considered a viable solution.

There is one other kludge but I don't know how well it works.
Basically under Energy Saver set the Mac to wake up after a power failure. Apparently if the Mac is connected to a power strip and the strip is switched off (after the Mac is shut down the proper way as normal!) the computer perceives this as a power failure and should start up after the power strip is turned on and the Mac senses power. I don't know if that really works but that's what I saw on the internet.

I don't know if I worded this very well

[jhharvest]

A solenoid and a bit of wire.

[dfuruta]

A solenoid and a bit of wire.

this is brilliant, but is it wise next to hard disks?

[brew]

Most computers can be turned on via their NIC by sending the magic packet to the destination machine over IP. The technology is called Wake On LAN and it works great.

You can use a web browser client or find a WOL client for your phone or something and send it that way.

http://lifehacker.com/348197/access-you ... ake+on+lan

Welcome to the future, the future is now!

[The Scum]

Does it use a standard ATX power supply?

Getting one of them to fully power up is a matter of temporarily bridging two of the pins.

Reference the second paragraph here:
http://www.smpspowersupply.com/connectors-pinouts.html

[dfuruta]

I don't believe Macs have wake on lan implemented

[curtiswyant]

I'm not a Mac guy, but you could send a WOL over the web using a smartphone or tablet: http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/woli.aspx

or if you can get into the BIOS, you can set the computer to auto power on at a specific day/time, often on a weekly schedule. I know you can do this on PCs but I'm not sure about Macs.

[RoyMatthews]

I'm not a Mac guy, but you could send a WOL over the web using a smartphone or tablet: http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/woli.aspx

or if you can get into the BIOS, you can set the computer to auto power on at a specific day/time, often on a weekly schedule. I know you can do this on PCs but I'm not sure about Macs.

Does WOL turn on a computer or just wake one from sleep. My understanding was that WOL for macs only wakes it from sleep.

In the Energy Saver system preference you can set a startup and shutdown schedule.

[The Scum]

WakeOnLAN also implies that you've got:

a> a LAN.
and
b> Some other device on the LAN to send the packet.

[jhharvest]

A solenoid and a bit of wire.

this is brilliant, but is it wise next to hard disks?

I'd say it's pretty safe. The tiny, tiny magnetic field of a solenoid on the outside of the chassis is not much compared to the one from the power transformer that's inside the computer. If you are paranoid I guess you could actuate the switch with the solenoid at the end of a long stick.

[dfuruta]

yeah, i guess it's probably fine. that seems like a clever solution, although maybe not the easiest to implement .