Hey there, fellow Vero users,
I’ve finished setting up my NAS and configuring everything, and I noticed it has a Wake-on-LAN feature—just like Kodi does—but 30 seconds seems a bit short to me.
It works really well, but I wanted to ask: do you use that built-in function, or are there specific Wake-on-LAN tools you use instead?
If so, which ones?
Hi
Just to clarify: you want to WOL your NAS from Kodi?
You can use custom tools to do this
If it works really well, what needs changing?
Sam
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More info about wake-on-lan by kodi: https://kodi.wiki/view/Wake_on_lan
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I looked it up and the NAS you have does not have a hibernation feature, only a full power off. As this can take several minutes to fully come up it isn’t particularly well suited to using with Kodi’s native WOL option. Kodi’s built in WOL would work well with something like a PC that is set to hibernate after a period of time and this would allow it to come up in just a few seconds.
You could install the Advanced Wake On Lan addon from Kodi’s repo and this would allow for more options like triggering at startup (for people who don’t keep their devices plugged in all the time) or mapping to a remote button with a notification that the network location has come online. This might work well in situations for people who have infrequent use or have severe power usage constraints.
If your using it on a daily basis you might find making yourself wait a couple minutes every time you want to pull up a video quite annoying. You might find it more sensible to just let the drives spin down after a period of time and let the NAS stay powered on. It uses only a few watts in this state and does not require any messing around with WOL signals. The delay it adds should only be a few seconds. In addition, or alternatively, it might have options for power on/off timers so you could just have it turn itself off during hours you know you will not be using it.
Another issue to consider is lifespan. Many people, myself included, believe that spinning rust tends to live longer when it is left spinning 24/7. The theory being that when you let a drive cool down and then heat back up that puts thermal stress on the components. The belief is that the motor left spinning sees almost no wear except during spin up and since the temperature is left mostly in a narrow range this puts the least amount of wear and stress on the drive. Western Digital many years ago built the perfect test case for this by releasing a drive to the public that spun the platter down on its own after only a matter of seconds. It had very little energy use but the things had a very high failure rate after only 9-12 months. As soon as that became apparent they switched to a much less aggressive spin down frequency but I doubt that was fully better as I think they canceled that whole concept just a couple years later and never expanded that feature past that single model drive.
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First of all, thanks for the detailed answer 
But I can’t find the add-on you’re talking about—where else can I find it…?
Sorry about that. I didn’t realize that was one of the ones that got abandoned with the python 3 switch. Someone else rewrote it under the name of Advanced WOL NG but it isn’t in Kodi’s repo. You can find it over at https://repo.kodinerds.net
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Found everything, tested it on the Shield, and quickly put something together…
It’s running… just the way I wanted it…
I like it better than the one from Kodi itself…
Thanks again, you guys are great…
It’s really cool working with you here…
Best regards from Germany…
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