See if laptop is on/off without ping?

1

Hi community,

I’m building an integration, to switch my power-supply on/off, depending if my laptop is turned on/off.
I was thinking of using the “ping” command ( Ping (ICMP) - Home Assistant ), so I would have a binary sensor, telling me the “state” of the laptop.
However, because this is a company laptop, ping is disabled :frowning: (I work from home, 95% of my time)
(I’m local admin on my PC, but company policy locked all kind of things !)
I tried to install a windows companion app, but this needs to open a port to communicate between the windows PC and HA.
I can install software, but opening ports is blocked.
(I can access file-shares on my NAS, install my local printers, do whatever I want on the internet …)

Anyone got a “workaround” for this ? The only thing I want is to let HA see if my laptop is on/off.
I can program a bit in VB.NET, if needed …

Best regards from Belgium,
Kris

2

This one works on my work computer
GamerClassN7/HA_Desktop_Companion: App which is using native HA Api to comunicate and report data to HA (github.com)

I believe I use the version form late august

edit I just tested the latest version and that works too.

3

Thanks, but already tested this version, it doesn’t work on my company laptop, due to some ports that are blocked.
In the meantime, I found “IOT Link”, this one seems to work, I see messages coming in on MQTT !
However, only one entitity does work, the one that shows online/offline.
(power status and battery remaining-percent are “unknown”)

Maybe someone can figure out what is wrong ?

configuration.yaml part:

mqtt:  
  binary_sensor:
    - name: "company_laptop_online"
      state_topic: "iotlink/eame/be07631/lwt"
      value_template: "{{ value }}"
      payload_on: "ON"
      payload_off: "OFF"
      device_class: "connectivity"
      qos: 1

    - name: "company_laptop_opladen"
      state_topic: "iotlink/eame/be07631/windows-monitor/stats/power/status"
      value_template: "{{ value }}"
      payload_on: "True"
      payload_off: "False"
      device_class: "plug"
      qos: 1

    - name: "company_laptop_batterij_status"
      state_topic: "iotlink/eame/be07631/windows-monitor/stats/battery/remaining-percent"
      value_template: "{{ value }}"
      device_class: "plug"
      qos: 1!

MQTT:
Capture