Wake on Lan my PC with Alexa

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
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1

Hello everyone,

first of all. I am completly new to openHAB and it is very overwhelming.
I dont understand a lot at the moment, thats why I am asking for a bit of help :slight_smile:

My goal is to wake on lan my PC by saying something along of “Alexa turn on my PC”
I used to be able to do that with HA-Bridge but that somehow didnt work anymore, then I tried to set up a new SD Card and Alexa cant find my Devices anymore. Anyway, I now want to try this with openHAB.

I’ve read some documentation and some tutorials but all of those are a bit too complex for me to be honest.
Is there somewhere a step by step guide that I can go along or is someone nice enough to help me guide through this?

Thanks a lot in advance!
Fuschy

2

Welcome @Fuschy!

I would tackle this in two main steps:

  1. Use the wake-on-LAN binding, and make sure you can wake-on-LAN from a sitemap switch
  2. Add the Alexa integration

I can help with step number 1.

A note first, however: the Wake-on-LAN binding is a v1 binding. OpenHAB is currently at v2, so the Wake-on-LAN binding still works. However, soon openHAB will move to v3 - this issue tracks the status of existing bindings, and what will happen in v3. It looks like the Wake-on-LAN binding will be sucked into the Network binding, so we’ll still have a method to perform Wake-on-LAN. OpenHAB v3 is not out yet, though, so I merely note all this so you’re aware that in the future, if you upgrade to v3, you will need to make some changes again.

Install Wake-on-LAN binding

From the PaperUI, install the Wake-on-LAN binding. In a browser, go to the IP address of your device which hosts openHAB, at port 8080. If the device is the same one that you’re writing these posts on, just got to http://localhost:8080/paperui/.

Once in PaperUI, go to Add-ons, then click the Bindings tab. Find the WOL (Wake-on-LAN) Binding, and click install.

Create Item for PC

Create a file called wol.items, and save it in your openHAB items folder. In this file, add the following:

Switch sWoLPC { wol="192.168.1.255#d4:3d:7e:f2:36:30" }

Full configuration details are here, but essentially:

  • If your PC is at IP address 192.168.1.112 (for example), use the IP address 192.168.1.255 in the Item. If your PC is at 192.168.0.112, use 192.168.0.255 in the Item.
  • The part after the # is the mac address of your PC

Add switch to sitemap

We now need to add a switch to our sitemap. Open your sitemap file from the sitemap openHAB folder, and add the following:

Switch item=sWoLPC label="PC WoL" mappings=[ON="PUSH"]

If no sitemap file exists, you will need to start one. Name it strictly mySitemap.sitemap, save it in the sitemap openHAB folder, and add the following:

sitemap mySitemap label="mySitemap" {
   Switch item=sWoLPC label="PC WoL" mappings=[ON="PUSH"]
}

This will give you a button which says PUSH in your sitemap (address will be something like http://localhost:8080/basicui/app). Press that button, and the WoL packet will be sent.

Once you’ve got this working, then move on to the Alexa stuff. I don’t use it, so can’t help unfortunately!

1 Like
3

First of all. THANKS a lot for this part of the tutorial.
Is there a specific directory on the OpenHABian that I need to create those .items and sitemap files?
Cant quite figure it out of the documentations… Im a complete noob when it comes to Linux based systems…

4

Such stuff is documented:
Overview: Configuration | openHAB
Things | openHAB

Hmmm. You also could install OpenHab on a Windows system.
What would you do then ?

5

Alright, so I was able to create those 2 files now. I have the button on my Sitemap and I am able to turn on my PC with my phone.
Now I “only” need help with the Alexa Part…

Thanks A LOT for that documentation already. Was a huge part. Also learned a bit about the system through it :slight_smile:

1 Like
6

Well done though - that’s quite an achievement already! openHAB is extremely flexible, and therefore quite intimidating when first starting. I found examples far more useful than the documentation in trying to understand how everything works, so that’s what I try to provide when helping.

Good luck with the Alexa integration. I know there are many on here who use it, so you should be in capable hands!

7

Bumping so anyone might help me. Still havent been able to connect my Openhab Sitemap Items to my Alexa…

8

One way you could do it:
in Alexa app you can define your own routines. That means you can define a trigger ( a sentence that you say ) and an action that will be done. As action you can switch on / off switches that are available / visible by Alexa.
An other way ( not sure if that works with english sentences ): you can define a switch the name PC123 and turn it on from Alexa by “turn on PC123”. The related rule then needs to execute the WOL task.