Remote WAKE ON LAN SOLUTION

Author: Emilio Tonix Review Date: 26/08/2021 Open Source

Docker instalation

You can skip this step if you already have a docker instalation.

https://gist.github.com/Tonix22/5c046b171b697bac2c0b4f5110a19656

Main scope and overview

This code assumes that you are familiar with Wake-On-LAN and can perform it on your PC. The goal of this project is to enable Wake-On-LAN outside of your local network, as an alternative to using a virtual private network (VPN) at home or in locations where you do not have access to a router to set one up.

The main idea is to use an ESP8266 to send a WOL packet throught udp with port 9 and lwipsockets.

For remote wake up there are two ways to this.

Easier but extra cost

Use the WOL_only project to set up the wifi settings and MAC address in the header file,then just power on the esp8266 device and it will run a sript to excute the WOL. The extra cost is because you need a wifi remote wifi plug to this. So the main idea to power up remotely the esp8266 once is ready it sends magic packet to PC.

Cheaper with extra work

Use the MQTT_and_WOL project to set up and MQTT remote server. The main idea is that the device is subscribed to a topic, we could say that this is like to continous listening certain signal,the code wait to recieve "ON" as the trigger of WOL.

The MQTT parameters are accesible from the code and the most frequently parameters are in the header file with defines. In my case I used adafruit.io as an MQTT server, but you could use other suppliers as CloudMqtt or AWS. I used adafruit because is free, but don't hope high bandwith and 100% guaranteed responses it fails sometimes when server sleep for some seconds.

Install enviorment

To do as faster as possible the esp8266 development we used a docker image with esp8266 RTOS SDK, enviromental paths, python tools, compiler configurations. As requisite install docker in your os.

For windows my advice is to use wsl, however windows has native docker, but I didn't try it before.

If you don't have docker follow this procedure till step 4

Install docker if you don't have it

Pull this docker image tonix22/esp8266-idf

user@user:~$ sudo docker pull tonix22/esp8266-idf

Run docker image, open a terminal in the source folder with the device esp8266 pluged.

user@user:~$ ./mount_docker.sh
root@c6106fe485ce:/home/esp# cd /project

Set up WIFI credentials

Got to your project folder WOL_only or MQTT_and_WOL it is the same process for both of them. Then configure the WIFI_SSID and PASSWORD

Example

root@c6106fe485ce:/home/esp# cd WOL_only/
root@c6106fe485ce:/home/esp# make menuconfig

Choose the option Example Connection Configuration and then setup your wifi credentials Wifi SSID and Wifi Password

NOTE In this same menu you can configure your USB port, for linux users it may be also setup. Check step 4 from this link USB_DEVICE SETTINGS

Configure MAC addres

Go to MQTT_and_WOL/main/wol.h or WOL_only/main/udp_client.c ,and modify the #define MAC_ADDR with your MAC.

#define MAC_ADDR 0x24,0x4B,0xFE,0x8d,0x81,0x3D

Configure MQTT

Go to MQTT_and_WOL/main/mqtt.h and then check all paramters requerided for your project. If there remains any field just deleted in mqtt_cfg in mqtt.c

Download project to board

The last step is to compile and save the code in the device.

ALL compile folder source files

Flash download code to board

Monitor It is optional, it shows device debug info.

root@c6106fe485ce:/home/esp/project/WOL_only# make all flash monitor