I’m in the process of getting my Home Assistant environment up and running, and decided to run a test: it turns out that my gaming PC (custom 5800X3D/7900XTX build) uses more power just sitting idle, than both of my storage freezers combined.
Background: In addition to some other things, I bought two “Eightree” brand Zigbee-compatible plugs to see how they fare. One is monitoring the power usage of both freezers on a power strip (don’t worry, it’s a heavy duty strip meant for this), and the other is measuring the usage of my entire desktop setup (including monitors and the HA server itself, a Lenovo M710q).
After monitoring these for a couple days, I decided that I will shut off my PC unless I’m actively using it. It’s not a server, but it does have WOL capability, so if I absolutely need to get into it remotely, it won’t be an issue.
Pretty fascinating stuff, and now my wife is completely on board as well; she wants to put a plug on her iMac to see what it draws, as she uses it to hold her cross-stitch files and other things.
That smart plug may not be rated to the max wattage when GPU and CPU are at full blast. Be careful, because that could be an expensive mistake. Place a surge protector between the smart plug and the PC to be safe. Also run the PC full tilt for a while and make sure the smart plug doesnt get warm. If it does, fores have been known to start from those.
Sounds like you know this with WoL, but suspend is your friend 😉 If the gaming PC is linux and you run into suspend issues, let me know, I’ve seen 'em all.
The plugs are rated for 1800W each. Should be fine. I hit 670W a bit earlier, running Furmark VK and Cinebench R23 multi-core simultaneously for shits and giggles.
Oh nice. Do you have a link to the plugs you chose? I got some 20amp ZigBees from Aliexpress for $3 each, work great, but I wouldn’t trust them to handle their rating.
Depends on the driver. Usually for finicky ones you can do an rmmod at suspend and a modprobe on resume. What distro, and are you using the default suspend mechanism?
Formally add a system entry to run at suspend/resume (like how nvidia does in their driver package)
Or
Write a script that rmmods, suspends, sleeps, modprobes, and map it to Cntrl-Alt-Shift-S
I usually do 2 because I like the hotkey method for desktops, and it keeps things the same for both. Also allows me to close a lid on a laptop and leave it on. But 1 is more “formal”.
Happy to share some scripts if you’d like, on my phone now, though.
If that doesn’t work out of the box, it’s likely because you’re hitting S1 instead of S3, but give that test script a shot and let me know how it goes!
what kind of driver could the keyboard be using? lsmod shows nothing beyond the HID driver, but thats being used by the external mouse which works normally after sleep.
lshw shows it going by /dev/input/event6 or something like it?
Could be internal to kernel? Try updating /etc/default/grub to include: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash atkbd.reset" and run sudo update-grub. This will cause a full keyboard reset on resume.
If you have not run BIOS updates, that could be it, too.
Ok, just be sure it has an integrated circuit breaker otherwise its just…a surge protector. You’ll also need to identify what load it triggers at. For example, I use these on my gear https://tripplite.eaton.com/isobar-4-outlet-surge-protector-6-ft-cord-3300-joules-diagnostic-leds~ISOBAR4ULTRA and they’re rated to 12A which should protect a 15A rated smart plug. I put rated in italics because errrryone is buying CE (instead of UL listed) smart plugs.
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Couple of thoughts:
That smart plug may not be rated to the max wattage when GPU and CPU are at full blast. Be careful, because that could be an expensive mistake. Place a surge protector between the smart plug and the PC to be safe. Also run the PC full tilt for a while and make sure the smart plug doesnt get warm. If it does, fores have been known to start from those.
Sounds like you know this with WoL, but suspend is your friend 😉 If the gaming PC is linux and you run into suspend issues, let me know, I’ve seen 'em all.
The plugs are rated for 1800W each. Should be fine. I hit 670W a bit earlier, running Furmark VK and Cinebench R23 multi-core simultaneously for shits and giggles.
Oh nice. Do you have a link to the plugs you chose? I got some 20amp ZigBees from Aliexpress for $3 each, work great, but I wouldn’t trust them to handle their rating.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQTFM1T6
Hah, Wyze use the same shell for their WiFi model: https://a.co/d/3kSQaoF
I think these are all based off these ZigBee models at $4 a pop: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/US-Smart-Home-Tuya-Alexa-Voice_1601241553658.html
how do you deal with kb+trackpad not working after wake?
Depends on the driver. Usually for finicky ones you can do an rmmod at suspend and a modprobe on resume. What distro, and are you using the default suspend mechanism?
yes, i’m on ubuntu, using all the default drivers.
and i would guess its finnicky because its an old laptop.
is it a matter of scripting rmmod and modprobe to run on suspend/wake?
There are a couple of ways:
Or
I usually do 2 because I like the hotkey method for desktops, and it keeps things the same for both. Also allows me to close a lid on a laptop and leave it on. But 1 is more “formal”.
Happy to share some scripts if you’d like, on my phone now, though.
how do i do 1? having timeout to suspend and lid close to suspend would be great. and id like to see some example scripts!
i had pretty much given up on standby with this one.
Will grab some when I back, but assuming you are using
systemd, it’s easy if you follow this old but good method: https://blog.christophersmart.com/2016/05/11/running-scripts-before-and-after-suspend-with-systemd/If that doesn’t work out of the box, it’s likely because you’re hitting S1 instead of S3, but give that test script a shot and let me know how it goes!
i will test that out later today, thanks!
deleted by creator
what kind of driver could the keyboard be using? lsmod shows nothing beyond the HID driver, but thats being used by the external mouse which works normally after sleep.
lshw shows it going by /dev/input/event6 or something like it?
Could be internal to kernel? Try updating
/etc/default/grubto include:GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash atkbd.reset"and runsudo update-grub. This will cause a full keyboard reset on resume.If you have not run BIOS updates, that could be it, too.
What benefit does this serve in this situation?
Fail safe. It’ll trip the power before it hits the wall and burns the house potentially limiting a fire or containing whatever did happen.
Ok, just be sure it has an integrated circuit breaker otherwise its just…a surge protector. You’ll also need to identify what load it triggers at. For example, I use these on my gear https://tripplite.eaton.com/isobar-4-outlet-surge-protector-6-ft-cord-3300-joules-diagnostic-leds~ISOBAR4ULTRA and they’re rated to 12A which should protect a 15A rated smart plug. I put rated in italics because errrryone is buying CE (instead of UL listed) smart plugs.
I’m not OP or the right person. Wrong recipient lol. But info was noted for my own use.
Questionable approach since a cheap ‘surge protector’ could very well start a fire