I’ve written previously about using Tailscale to wake a PC remotely. I’m now using Home Assistant to wake it in fewer steps.

To recap, I wanted to wake a PC at home from another continent, but WoL requires a physical link. I used Tailscale to remotely access my NAS on the same physical network as the PC, then used it to send a WoL magic packet.

Since then, I started running Home Assistant on a machine at home, to control some lights and power outlets. I recently learned that Home Assistant has a WoL integration. I used it to add a Wake [target PC hostname] button to my Home Assistant dashboard. Now I can wake that PC with one click, instead of fussing with the terminal.

This also helps with my remote-access use case. Since my Home Assistant instance is available to me via Tailscale, I can use the wake button from more or less anywhere with an internet connection.

What’s more, the target is a home theater PC which cannot be woken by Bluetooth gamepads. So I’ve embellished my living room setup to wake the PC from the couch, with a Zigbee button or my phone.

At some point, I'd like to learn more about self-hosting Headscale or using Wireguard directly. But for now, I'm quite pleased by how well all this stuff fits together.