HOW-TO spare energy as much as possible

[mumsoft]

With this setup you will lose hardly any functionality, and also no energy.

- leave the Asus on all day.
- let the hard disk stop after 5 minutes of no activity
- make the WLAN (Wifi, radio) switchable

If you don't run processes that makes the disk spinning al the time, this will consume about 4.6 Watt most of the time, and after spinning up the disk it will consume 11.6 Watt, but only as long as needed.

All these 'techniques' have been described earlier by different people, but I give you them here in a combined version.

1) leave the Asus on all day.
There is nothing to it. Just plug it in.

2) let the hard disk stop after 5 minutes of no activity
If you, as I, use K.C.Furge's modified firmware 1.0.7.8 (second edition), see the comment from me here: http://wl700g.homelinux.net/drupal/?q=node/191
As I have found out that with WLAN on (wifi on) the hard disk spins up now and then, letting it spin down after 5 minutes will only prove useful with WLAN switched off (and no other process in your Asus attaching the disk constantly)

3) make the WLAN (Wifi, radio) switchable
This is a revised script after the one Milky has published here: http://wl500g.info/showpost.php?p=65373&postcount=7

#!/opt/bin/bash
#Initialize, get state
if wl radio | grep 1 &> /dev/null
then
   #radio=off, Powerled on
   echo "direction=out" > /proc/miscio/gpio_1_config
   echo "0" > /proc/miscio/gpio_1
else
   #radio=on, Powerled blinks
   echo "direction=out" > /proc/miscio/gpio_1_config
   echo "2" > /proc/miscio/gpio_1
fi

#loop forever
while true
do
   #Check if copy button is pressed
   if grep 1 /proc/miscio/gpio_6 &> /dev/null
   then
      if wl radio | grep 1 &> /dev/null
      then
         wl radio on
         #Touch HDD to let it spin up (OPTIONAL)
         touch /opt/bin/radio
         #Blink powerled fast
         echo "direction=out" > /proc/miscio/gpio_1_config
         echo "2" > /proc/miscio/gpio_1
      else
         wl radio off
         #Put powerled on
         echo "direction=out" > /proc/miscio/gpio_1_config
         echo "0" > /proc/miscio/gpio_1
      fi
   fi
   #Stay here while copy button is still pressed
   while grep 1 /proc/miscio/gpio_6 &> /dev/null
   do
      echo "Just waiting" > /dev/null
   done
   sleep 1
done

You can copy & past this script with a decent editor (nano, joe), and save it as 'radio' as I did, in /opt/bin. Make it executable with chmod +x /opt/bin/radio.
To test, start it manually. This script never ends, but you can stop it with Ctrl-C. When it runs, the power led will blink when radio is on, and you can switch radio on and off with the copy button.
To make it run forever, add a line in /opt/etc/rc.local:

# Start radio-switch
 screen -d -m /opt/bin/radio

By the way, this assumes you have screen installed:

ipkg install screen

That's about it. Obviously, you must have telnet or ssh-access to the Asus, have root rights, have a writable /opt and so forth.
With all the wifi-clients I have, the disk spins up automatically. Spinolo has reported this is not the case with a PlayStation. (http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?p=97654#post97654).

BTW: You won't loose the ability to copy the contents of an USB stick as the Asus intended purpose of the copy button!

Good luck and save!
Marc