I have tried to find my answer through this great forum resource but just could not find it.

I have just bough a fitpc2i, just waiting for ssd to come and o/s then I will be playing.

The pc will be mounted in a position that a can not access easily, can not get to front panel on/off switch.

I can power up via an external power switch feeding the 12vdc input - got this covered, auto on.
But on power down I need to shut down correctly and I am assuming that switching the 12vdc input off will just kill the juice to the pc: no correct power down, I will be using a ssd(not certain if his helps).
If pressing the front panel power button powers down the pc gracefully then I can mod the pc front switch but I will void the warranty (I don't want this). Any clues how this can be down.
I have built a few vehicle based pc and they have ignition sense wires and the dc psu handles the shutdown great.
Can the serial port be utilised or even one of the network ports?
I don't want to resort to a mechanical solution, solenoid to press the front button or a pc mb mod.
I see this need to be just as important as the auto on itself.

Any help would be great and valuable to the rest of the forum community.

Cheers

Jay

If you are looking for a remote built in soft shutdown feature, then I will have to disappoint you, the FitPC2i has no such.
As an idea that poped up in my mind, you can use a com port as an IO, that will activate a shutdown or standby script, and bound it to the key switch
Also I suggest you to use OS for embedded systems like WES or embeded linux which can be customized to tolerate instant off shutdowns

I run Linux on my PCs and I routinely switch them off by logging in as root through the LAN and executing the following command:

shutdown -h now

This shuts down the PC normally.