My Raspberry Pi runs OpenELEC. The XBMC has a Power-button in the left-bottom corner where I can shutdown the Raspberry Pi. That works fine, but I can't figure out how to turn it on again after the shutdown. The only way I can make it start again is by pulling out the power plug and plug it in again, but that cannot be the only way to do it.
Do I need to create my own hardware-power button for this or can I turn it on in any other way? I'd love to have some kind of remote to turn it on.
Revision 2 of the Raspberry Pi board has holes on the board for connecting a reset switch. You can solder two jumper pins there, then connect a push button. This should reboot the Raspberry Pi.
When you shut down the Raspberry Pi, the board and USB ports will still be powered, even if the CPU is not running. If this matters to you, there is this Kickstarter project, constructing a true power switch, with which the Pi can switch itself off from software.
The source for these links.
You can boot an idle Raspberry Pi via the GPIO pins. All you have to do is connecting pin 5 to ground. Either by a switch or a jumper.
In addition to that, you can also use the same pin/switch as a shut down switch. You just need a simple circuit, a resistor and a Python script for that to work. See the following example (source in German); I am using that for my Raspberry Pi, and it works fine. I just left out the LED as I did not need it.
Source: Hoch- und runterfahren mittels Taster (incl. Status-LED)
Simply connect the Raspberry Pi to the USB of your TV! (if your TV has one). I did it, and it works flawlessly. :)
If you want to use a remote controller to turn on the RPi, I suggest the following setup:
Buy an IR photo-diode, or even better, an IR photo-transistor, and connect it to Pin 5 and GND. It acts like a push-button. When it receives IR beams from remote controller, it shorts, and hence connects Pin 5 to GND, hence the RPi turns on.
Fortunately, shorting the pin 5 to GND does not have any effect during the normal operation of RPi; however, when the RPi is shut down, you can use an IR remote controller to turn the RPi on.
This is the setup that I'm currently using on our companies devices ;)
The Raspberry Pi cannot be booted remotely over LAN, nor by timer.
Maybe you can use a remote controlled power switch to power your Raspberry Pi? I have never used them, but they are for sale.
I solved it with a simple remote-controlled power outlet. Just turn off the Raspberry Pi and turn it on like you turn on your light switch. Do no soldering or difficult matters. :-).
Connect your Pi's to a PoE switch and simply disable and then re-enable the port of the Pi you want to bring back up. I just VPN into my network and access the PoE switch on it's local IP and start up a pi from a shutdown-state.
(2) Methods for PoE-enabling a Pi:
PoE Hat: Just whack this on top of your Pi and light it up with an Ethernet cable connected to a PoE switch. PoE Hats are £20 from all Pi Resellers.
PoE Splitter: This doesn't require modifying the Pi. Plug this dongle on the end of the Ethernet cable connected to the PoE switch and the Ethernet cable from the dongle into the Pi's Ethernet Port and the MicroUSB cable from the dongle into the Pi's standard power MicroUSB port. Works with any Pi model and leaves it free to use a different hat (than the PoE hat). £9.90 from Amazon at the time of this writing.
ZyXEL GS1900-8HP-GB0102F PoE Switch: The one I use and recommend to re-animate shutdown Pi's is the ZyXEL GS1900-8HP-GB0102F. Great PoE switch with lots of bells and whistles and supports PoE (802.3af) and PoE+ (802.3at). £97 inc VAT
PoE Splitter being used to power both a Pi 3B+ AND a 7" Touchscreen Display
As the other posters already said the Raspberry Pi hardware does not have a power controller built in, so you would need to rely on hardware add-ons.
One solution would be the RemotePi Board which piggy backs on the Raspberry Pi and enables you to switch OpenElec (or other XBMC distributions) on and off using any infrared remote that you already own (for example your TV's or DVD's remote), by 'learning' the button you choose. It shuts down the OS as well before powering down to avoid SD card corruption. In addition you can use the remote remote to control your mediacenter.
If you've already halted the system using the button in XBMC, pulling the power cable out and re-inserting is still the easiest way to power on the Pi. It's not great, but it is quick.
I came across this https://howchoo.com/g/mwnlytk3zmm/how-to-add-a-power-button-to-your-raspberry-pi on the internet.
It implements a physical button to turn the Pi on and off. All it needs is tweaking some config files and a bit of Python script.
There really is little to no point to shutting down the media centre. It only costs a couple of pennies a day.
However, after shutting down, remove the power. Then when you would like to boot it up again, just put the lead into the power socket :).
Most TVs allow you to switch between HDMI and other inputs, so there shouldn't be an issue leaving it running anyway.
Shutting down the Pi will not power off the Pi. But it will tell the Linux to flush the cache and unmount the local storage, also disconnecting any network shares. So it is mainly used for a clean shutdown for unplugging the Pi from power. It is almost the same like you shutdown you computer instead of unplug the power while running Linux, Windows or any other OS.
So the best way might be a remote controlled power. And then first shutdown OpenELEC / Kodi and then switch off the power.
I had the same problem, so I used a real USB cable (not the power supply to USB) and plugged it in my TV, so if I turn my TV on, the USB got power and so my Raspberry Pi starts...
