PowerKey Pro 600
Volume Number: 13
Issue Number: 12
Column Tag: Tools of the Trade
by Christopher Hall
This is not your father's powerstrip... A look at the latest
in computer automation technology
Figure 1. Sophisticated Cicuits' PowerKey Pro 600.
That Special Morn
It's a special holiday morning and gift wrapping is flurrying as the gadgets and gizmos
are ripped open by eager hands. As the children shriek over their eMates and the adults
wince at their credit card bills, what should an intrepid Mac System Administrator
find as his gift but... a power strip?
"They couldn't get me a tie or cummerbund or something else I don't need? My gift's
another power strip?" our heroic Mac loyalist laments ungratefully. With a brave
eye, he slowly opens the elegant biodigradable cardboard box to look at Sophisticated
Circuits' newest toy, the PowerKey Pro Model 600.
Rummaging thru the box's contents, our Holiday Geek wonders, "Why would a power
strip have such a strange ADB cable? And two RJ-11 phone jacks? And software?
Rushing to his Mac, he excitedly installs the software, shuts down, and moves all of his
power cords from his brain-dead power strip to the suddenly fascinating PowerKey.
Perhaps this happy scenario will be repeated for many users this year, because the
PowerKey Pro 600 is one of the most useful geegaws a Macintosh-using Inspector
Gadget could receive. Under the mild-mannered guise of a handsome power strip, the
PK Pro 600 hides a powerhouse power controller with all the smarts needed to control
its six outlets from your Macintosh by keystroke, schedule, telephone or AppleScript.
What Can It Do - The Basics
As an intelligent power strip, the PowerKey Pro 600 can do simple and useful tasks;
even merely starting up the Mac can be enhanced. Older Macs which lack "soft" power
(that is, keyboard power on, such as a Power Mac 6100 series lacks), can now enjoy
that convenience. Furthermore, if a system has many peripherals to be started up
before the CPU (such as hard disks with a lengthy spin up), setting the CPU's outlet
with a delay allows true one-touch startup.
Starting up or shutting down on a schedule, as well as saving energy by powering down
an idle Mac's monitor, is also easy with the PowerKey's very well-designed software.
Setup and Use
Setting up the PowerKey is a breeze. The hardware requires nary a moment of thought
to properly hook ADB, the phone and the power cords together, while the software
requires little more than a reboot and some preference setting. Sophisticated Circuits
has wisely given a switch for each outlet, the ability to disable the switches and, for
the careless scripter who PowerKey's his Mac into not being able to boot, a simple
hardware override.
Figure 2. Hardware Setup of the PowerKey Pro.
The PowerKey Editor is the interface to the PowerKey Extension, the background-only
application that does the real work. A simple Schedule window shows all the events
created for a given PowerKey. Considering that multiple PowerKey Pros can be
daisychained over ADB, this control is appreciated for complex power control needs,
such as an array of web servers.