With the gaming PC going inside the Kraylix cabinet and the Vizio TV behind a bezel, today I spent some time coming up with a solution to being able to power each on remotely as neither device’s power buttons will be accessible. There’s a couple approaches possible here, like trying to force each device to turn on automatically as soon as power is applied, but I decided against this and favored adding remote buttons instead for a few reasons:

1. I won’t always be using the gaming PC. The arcade cabinet will sometimes be powered on and playing real arcade boards, not the PC. Therefore it shouldn’t simply turn on when power is applied.
2. Forcing the TV power on doesn’t solve being able to choose the input (and I will be using multiple). That said, on my television the power button doubles as an input selector! It turns out on my model, a long press on the power button powers the set off, and a short press switches inputs. This means by wiring the button remotely I could control not just the power but also switch inputs. Perfect!

So I went ahead and cracked open the TV first. It took removing just a bunch of screws to remove on the back, and it popped right open. Super easy. Thankfully the power button was wired to the back of the TV with just two wires – it’s very likely a simple passive microswitch, which means I can splice in to that connection and run my own wires to my own button!

I went ahead and cut the power button wires, then soldered them back together with my two wires added:

I also drilled a small hole in the bottom of the plastic back panel of the TV to feed the wires through. A bit of wire routing and tape later, and the TV is ready to close back up.

Finally, the moment of truth – powering on the TV with my own button… It worked!

It’s an arcade button, of course, because that’s what will be used on the finished cabinet. I plan to make use of the hidden button slots on the bottom side of the Kraylix control panel for these power buttons.

Next up, my gaming PC. I could have quite easily spliced into the power button’s wiring harness the same way I did above, but I found it just as easy and a bit faster to simply solder my custom power button wires to the cases’s power button solder terminals, pictured below:

And bingo, this one worked too!

As you might be able to tell, I’m getting as many things done that I can while the Kraylix cabinet is still out to paint. I think when it’s back things should go together fairly quickly now!