Wake on Lan Anywhere

During the second half of 2014, I started to use remote desktop functionality a lot more. This was driven my the ChromeBook that I had not having sufficient compute power. At first I used the Google Chrome extension for Remote Desktop, but after experimenting with various other remote desktop methods, I ended up with the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client built into Windows.

One of the problems that I had with it was that there was no way to turn on my computer when away from home. This meant that in order to remote desktop to my computer, I had to leave it on all the time.

Upon seeing a deal for a Raspberry Pi from Amazon, I thought it would be fun to play with it and see if I could use it to allow me to turn on my computer remotely. I installed Raspbian as it was easy and we didn’t need the performance other platforms may have given. I installed a simple web server onto it where upon accessing a page, the Raspberry Pi would then send the magic packet to my computer.

This project has been invaluable to me. It means that I only need to access a particular file on my Raspberry Pi to turn on my computer and this meant that I no longer had to remember to turn on my computer every morning. I also ended up creating an Android application to streamline the process even further. More information about the application can be found here.