Ok, I get it. You can’t implement WOL. Thanks for considering…
It can be implemented, but not in a way that we’d be happy with the experience. We do not want to encourage that.
You have a workaround by using WoL apps, and Nucleus does support it if you chose to go down that road.
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It’s not about the price for me, but the useless power consumption. I think it’s a big design mistake. If there was an alternative for Roon this was the reason to leave. It’s like you guys living in the dark ages when it’s coming to energy consumption.
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I agree, I think it’s a bit defeatist just to say people wouldn’t be happy with the experience when you’re in control of crafting it so that they are, but perhaps there’s some fundamental reason why not?
- Server: “I’m not playing music, or anything, I’ll go to sleep.”
- Control point: “hey server, wake up, I want to hear music.”
It seems so easy 
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I guess it’s the “… or anything …” that’s the difficult part, as I understanding the Roon Core is constantly checking back with “Roon HQ” for metadata updates. Maybe that’s the part that Danny has concerns with?
As an aside … as a software architect / developer myself, I like to strive towards “smarter systems” I work in automated logistics and a hot topic these days is reduction in average and peak power demain … the later hits our clients hard in the pocket. See we now have “smart” systems that help to mitigate the power requirements … we do this by making sure that the larger electric motors don’t all spin up together … and at time of low utilisations the devices switch into low power states. Of course there are compromise … but our algorithms are turnable by the user to achieve the right balance for them.
Have you read this:
Roon has to work cleanly for all potential installations. Not just one where the Roon topology is fairly simple.
What about cases where there are more than 1 RoonCore on the same network? What about cases where the endpoints are different PCs, do they need a separate WOL? It sounds like a WOL manager is needed.
Upgrade to run ROCK on Intel NUC 8. gen. In mysetup the server consumes 2.9 watt during standby (no music played).
I have rarely read a more unhelpful and arrogant reply to a user request!
Mmm, is it that difficult to make WOL optional so it can be switched on under the right circumstances? It seems to me that the vast majority of us do not have multiple cores and would really like WOL which should be part and parcel of a music streamer. As many have already pointed out it works fine in JRiver.
Ps. I switched from Sonos to Roon because what the devs wanted and what I expected from the software had drifted apart so much that I no longer could do the things I wanted. Roon is nice and I sincerely hope I can stick with it a little longer: it does so many things well.
What are you referring to re:Sonos? I love Roon but there are things Sonos is really good at
If you are asking me what I do not like about Sonos, I do not know where to begin … Three things are pretty crucial though:
- No support for large collections
- No support for HD rips
- They actually abandoned most support for playlists based on users’ collections (putting their faith in on-line streaming)
Instead of support for their old user base, they went for those who like to scream back at their speakers and hold “meaningful” dialogues with them (no Alexa not this version of the song but XXXX …)
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To me it sounds that Roon is afraid to implement WOL in the APP as it might not work on all related hardware which could lead to a lot of support questions towards Roon which they might not be able to solve. Hence WOL support has only been implemented into the Nucleus which is hardware they can control themselves.
Just my 50 cents…
Are you sure? I don’t think that the Nucleus products have WOL support, and neither do the Roon Remote software distributions (which would be the other half of the equation)
I thought so because @danny wrote: “You have a workaround by using WoL apps, and Nucleus does support it if you chose to go down that road.“
I stand corrected. The support is there in the BIOS of the Nucleus hardware, but needs a third party app running on your control devices to make use of it. The support is not in the Roon ecosystem of software.
Thank you for the clarification. That is similar to what my Mac Mini offers already today.
Sorry, but this sounds silly to me! Its 2,23 € wasted per month, and yes, it does sum up.
Besides, energy consumption cant be measured in $$$ only! Think twice…
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For me it just works. I have Rock installed on an i3 6100T based PC (custom build). I’ve installed the „Mocha WOL“ App on my iPad and configured the app. In fact, I only needed to add the IP and MAC address of my Rock-PC.
I can shut down Rock using the web page and start it again using the Mocha app.
If that’s what you ask for, try the app…
Gentlemen - it is sad to see how this thread evolves, especially the arguments for not adding WOL could not be more absurd. @danny
Every software company will check and prioritise CRs/issues/bugs. The severity of the issue, population of affected users and complexity to implement are probably the driving factors.
Let me try to do this exercise here:
Regarding Nucleus users:
- I assume only 10% or Roon users use a Roon Nucleus device
- the Nucleus is highly energy efficient as we learned
So lets please forget the Nucleus (only for a moment). Yes it can be improved, but we are talking about max savings of 20 EUR per year. Not worth discussing further - our audio gear is much more inefficient!
Regarding all other (non Nucleus) users:
- 90% of users are using a Windows or Mac located somewhere in the house. Mine is between kitchen and living room. It is a shared family iMac
- every Mac or Windows PC made in the last 10 years probably has WOL integrated within the OS
- my Mac is well configured: after 30mins of inactivity it will enter sleep consuming only 1W
- when Roon is streaming music, it does not enter sleep, so Roon (at least on Mac) has implemented the correct API calls to instruct the OS not to enter sleep (thanks for that!)
- if my Mac would be configured not to enter sleep, it would consume around 40W. IIRC that costs over 100 EUR per year - more then my Roon subscription (I live in Germany, energy IS EXPENSIVE and getting more so).
On adding WOL
I use the Roon iPad app. It knows to which Roon Server it was lastly connected. After my Mac enters sleep, well, I get that nice “Waiting for Roon Server” screen on the iPad.
Now please, explain me, why it is “complex” to send a WOL packet at this stage?
- forget about households with multiple Roon Servers - this is what, the less than 1% case?
- forget about Roon Ready devices - this is not what this CR is about - we can think on that on a later stage
A decent programmer can implement the WOL packet sending to the last known MAC of Roon server in 2 hours. Since Roon loves settings (I don’t, good technology has no settings in my opinion) and for the paranoid ones in here, well, add a setting to Roon to allow enabling/disabling sending WOL. Maybe another 2 hours implementation? Add some QA and planing and this CR takes 1 day to implement.
Implementing WOL brings:
- for people living in some parts of Europe, you have at leat allowed them to correctly configure they’re PCs to sleep when not in use and save maybe 100 EUR per year
- an enhancement to the user experience, not requiring the user to go to his sleeping PC to wake it in order to hear some more music. Isn’t a great UX Roon’s main proposition?
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Exactly 
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