Today we have a post from the category curiosities. During our daily rummage for new HomeKit devices, we actually ran across a PCI Express card that is supposed to control the computer via Apple HomeKit.
The target audience of the Punxasl PCIe Computer On/Off Remote Switch should be quite limited, as it is restricted to Apple HomeKit users who do not use a Mac, but have a computer with an available PCI Express slot in use. It also assumes that the user wants to turn on the computer via HomeKit in the first place.
When used in the PCI Express slot, no installation of drivers should be required. The connection with HomeKit is done via the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. Then, a simple switch is available in HomeKit to turn the computer on or off.
Even though a “Works with Apple HomeKit” logo is prominently displayed on the module, the device is unlikely to have gone through the official certification process. So you have to expect that a warning about this will greet you during setup. If that doesn’t interest you and you belong to the target group, you can get the card via Amazon.
If you have a Homebridge in use, you can use the plugin homebridge-wol. This works for both PC and Mac, but requires a little configuration.
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