MQTT Wake-on-LAN Proxy
A dedicated ESP32 hardware proxy that wakes home servers from anywhere in the world without opening a single port: a Telegram command flows through n8n and a cloud MQTT broker to the ESP32, which fires the Wake-on-LAN Magic Packet from inside the LAN.
Tech Stack
My ISP puts the home network behind CGNAT — no port forwarding, no inbound connections, no way to send a Wake-on-LAN packet from outside. Instead of fighting the firewall, this project flips the direction: a low-power ESP32 inside the LAN keeps a persistent outbound TLS connection to a cloud MQTT broker and acts as the wake trigger.
The flow: a command like /wake_server goes to a custom Telegram bot; a self-hosted n8n instance receives the webhook, verifies the Telegram user ID, and publishes to HiveMQ Cloud; the ESP32, subscribed over TLS-encrypted MQTT, crafts a UDP broadcast Magic Packet and physically wakes the target machine — an Ubuntu home server or a cloud-gaming rig.
The ESP32 (needed over the ESP8266 for the RAM a TLS handshake requires) runs MicroPython and sits on a wall charger, drawing almost nothing — a tiny, always-on doorway into the network that never exposes a port.