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
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.Code:#!/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
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:
By the way, this assumes you have screen installed:Code:# Start radio-switch screen -d -m /opt/bin/radio
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.Code:ipkg install screen
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