A few years ago I tried to get my Mac to wake up on either an external event or an Indigo timed event and then go back to sleep again. At the time, I found this clearly wasn't supported as it "slept right through the alarm".
Since then, I have always prevented my Mac from sleeping and generally, don't have any problems. However, I would like to know if anyone has found a way (or maybe the SW now supports it) to allow the Mac to wake from sleep for internal scheduled and external events.
If not, is there anything on the horizon?

There's not any ability to create wake up events from external events.

There was some undocumented (or documented but rarely used) API where an app could schedule a wake up event. I believe it's no longer available for sandboxing reasons. Mountain Lion has some kind of new facility where some things can be done while the Mac is in some sort of semi-sleep state but we haven't looked at that closely and aren't likely to anytime soon given all the other priorities.

Newish Macs are quite energy efficient when idle (display asleep and not much else going on).

alang_94526 wrote:I would like to know if anyone has found a way (or maybe the SW now supports it) to allow the Mac to wake from sleep for internal scheduled and external events. If not, is there anything on the horizon?

Are you talking about on-demand wakes or scheduled wakes? For scheduled sleep/wake events, you can set a basic schedule in the Energy Saver system preference pane (System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> click "Schedule" button a bottom). For on-demand wakes, you can use OS X's implementation of WOL (Wake On LAN). That feature is somewhat limited in that, in order to use it easily, you have to be using an AirPort (or similarly compatible) router and the Back To My Mac feature in iCloud. With some rather advanced TCP packet hacking, you can create your own WOL ethernet packet that will wake your Mac if sent from within your internal network as well (if I remember correctly, the WOL ethernet packet is created based on the Ethernet/WiFi MAC address). Just make sure the "Wake for network access" checkbox is checked in System Preferences -> Energy Saver.

As Jay mentioned, there is likely a Mac OS X API interface for applications to set their own sleep/wake schedule. There must be, because my EyeTV application can put the computer to sleep on demand and can set it to wake automatically to record EyeTV scheduled programs.

There are 2 types of event that I would have thought could wake up a Mac that Energy Saver has put into sleep mode:
- An Indigo scheduled event e.g. I have an Indigo schedule to turn a light off at 11:30pm. If the computer is asleep, it wakes itself at 11:30, sends the Insteon command out to turn off the light and goes back to sleep
- An insteon device changes state that is tied to an Indigo trigger event, which as above, would wake the Mac and service the trigger event then go back to sleep.

Doesn't sound like these are supported though.

Nope. It may be technically possible to add #1 to a software package like Indigo (though I don't see that happening). #2 is probably not possible due to INSTEON, PowerLinc and USB design limitations. If you have that few INSTEON devices connected to Indigo that the computer would be asleep most of the time, you might consider a stand-alone controller like an ISY99. Lower power consumption than a Mac mini, but less functional too. Just a thought.

nsheldon wrote:you might consider a stand-alone controller like an ISY99. Lower power consumption than a Mac mini, but less functional too. Just a thought.

The question I would have would be how well such a solution could be integrated with Indigo; back before the 2414 was obsoleted by the new protocol, a lot of simple schedule and fixed trigger stuff could automatically be pushed down into the PLM as part of the shutdown/sleep process and taken back whenever the Mac woke up. Would there be any long range plans to allow this same functionality into an ISY99? I realize that it would be a totally different set of commands, and that Smarthome may not have released any API other than the web access they advertise.

We have no plans for supporting the ISY regardless of the API they provide. We believe that the difference in energy usage between an idle Mac and the ISY is worth it given the significant increase in functionality and ease-of-use that you get with Indigo.

I don't have any experience with the ISY99i, which is produced by Universal Devices, but I was thinking of it as a replacement for Indigo and the Mac mini, not a supplement. I'd agree with Jay though. The energy usage of a Mac mini left on 24/7 is very minimal. It literally only costs a few dollars a month in electricity to run 24/7 and you get a much higher class of functionality with it and Indigo running than you would with any self-contained device like the ISY99i. I only mentioned it because it sounded like you only have a few INSTEON devices that actually need controlling. If all you need to do is turn stuff on or off at specific times, an entire home automation server isn't needed.

nsheldon wrote:If all you need to do is turn stuff on or off at specific times, an entire home automation server isn't needed.

And I'd have to agree with both of you as well; if you think that all you will ever need is to turn a couple of lights on at dusk and turn one off at 10 pm and the other at dawn, the ISY is probably all you'll ever need and it does have a somewhat smaller power footprint than a full blown computer, although both are pretty negligible... but if you really want to make the system sit up and beg, having the flexibility and capabilities given by logging and variables and conditional scripts accessing external data sources (all of which are lost when the computer passes off the control to anything else, no matter what it is) could easily save you more power than the Mac consumes. And the final kicker is that the Mac at our house that supports Indigo is also logging weather info and functioning as a whole family DVR by recording shows on demand through EyeTv and then exporting them to the local ITunes library, so it's never sleeping anyway...

Just for the record, I have a pretty complex Indigo system (temperature, pool, spa, solar, sprinklers, aquarium, lighting, heating, security spy cameras).
The simple light example was to make it easy to understand my question