Start a PC on Machine Powerup

I have a touch pc that is being used as an HMI and laser control. Does anyone know how I can power on the PC when the machine powers up instead of opening up the cabinet and pressing the power button?

Hi, you can usually set a setting in the bios so that the PC will boot when it receives external power.

You can use a little relay connected to the motherboard instead of the start button. Alternatively, if supported by the computer, you can use Wake on LAN magic packets from the PLC to turn it on. Some BIOS even support the feature of turning back on after power failure (for servers and such).

I did not find anything in the BIOS. Have you used an AB Control Logix to do the wake on LAN before?

On most PCs, the start button is two wires connected to two pins. You should be able to easily wire it into a push button outside the cabinet. Only hard part will be making it look pretty.

Helliana said:

On most PCs, the start button is two wires connected to two pins. You should be able to easily wire it into a push button outside the cabinet. Only hard part will be making it look pretty.

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Which is why you could just use a little relay inside the cabinet instead of a button. You can also tell if the PC has turned on if you have a 5V input (a lot of encoder/counter cards have these) by hijacking the power on LED lines. These are all just little plug connections to arrays of pins on the motherboard (to make it easy to put the mobo in whatever case you want to use).