An Android app that does a little bit of ad-hoc home automation. It does two things:
- when phone is connected to external power, it sends Wake-on-LAN packet to hardcoded MAC address
- when phone is disconnected from external power, it connects over SSH and shuts the machine down
Startup is with Wake-on-LAN and is relatively easy: send a single specially crafted packet. It's fire-and-forget, the app doesn't check if the PC actually booted or not. App needs to know IP and MAC of the target machine.
The app connects to target machine using SSH. It then does "sudo shutdown -h now" and plays a short confirmation signal. For this, the app needs to know: IP of target machine, a key pair that would let it in, username and password of sudo-capable user on the target machine.
My apartment happens to have an unused light switch and wiring right at the front door. Now, add an AC charger, then a spare Android phone running this app. The light switch becomes a PC on/off switch. Yes it's hacky, and yes it works.