# A USB power switch for your computer?



## azariah007 (Sep 8, 2009)

Hi everybody! I'm looking at building a fairly basic USB connected switch to control my computers power modes. Standby, Hibernate, Shutdown, and Restart.

Why? Well because I'm looking for relatively easy electronic construction projects. Not to easy but not mind fryingly hard either. 

Anybody know of a device out there that does all 4 or a way to build one from scratch. Baring in mind I'm fairly knew at this game.  I assume I'd need a programmable IC to interpret signals from the relay switches to something the OS can interpret as a command to Shutdown for instance. 

It just came to me as a really great idea. Suppose I'd better go out and patent it before someone else does. ;D

I know of similar devices but they only do one power mode.


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## Frank4d (Sep 10, 2006)

Maybe something like this: http://www.slscorp.com/pages/corecommander.php
You would need a motherboard that supports wake on USB for restart to work.


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## azariah007 (Sep 8, 2009)

Hi frank that link you posted is no good in Australia for some reason. I'd say that I'm to far away from the server to get a decent response time. My browsers keep timing out. I'm going to check response times pinging it through CMD. 

All of them timed out to far away. Thanks for trying anyway.



> You would need a motherboard that supports wake on USB for restart to work.


Oh dear maybe I should be more specific. This is for controling the power state when the computer is _*ON*_ not off.  Thought I should clarify that. The power button does all the start up modes no matter what mode your starting from.  which you would know already I'm sure. It'd just be nice not to have to press more than one button to shutoff your computer.  especially in 7 and Vista where the power modes are hidden behind a sub menu in the Start Menu. Although I believe 7 has rectified the issue by making Shutdown the default function. Unlike Vista which was standby. 

Also this is for XP for the present but it would be ideal if you could use it on all OS's current Linux and Mac OS X included.  But maybe I'm hoping for too much.


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## Soundy (Feb 17, 2006)

A lot of "multimedia" keyboards already have these functions built-in. Almost all laptops put some or all of them on "function" keys, too.

On my old Acer laptop, for example, Fn + F3 goes to Standby... Fn + F4 goes to Hibernate


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## azariah007 (Sep 8, 2009)

Hm thanks for reminding me about that Soundy. The only problem is that the keyboard I'm using is a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. It has Macro keys and some multimedia keys but nothing for power management. Although it does have 5 fully changeable keys that I could reprogram. I'll look into it thanks.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I reprogrammed the "mail" key on my MS 2000 keyboard as a "sleep" key, since the keyboard didn't have one of those. Works fine.


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## azariah007 (Sep 8, 2009)

Ok did you just use the Microsoft Keyboard software or does this require programing knowledge?


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Nope, just used their keyboard driver's macro capability to key in the proper keys.


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## azariah007 (Sep 8, 2009)

Cool thanks for that


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