I must be too old school because my first thought when i read this was “with an old solenoid lying around and a few lines of code, an AtTiny could strike a key on the bluetooth keyboard, waking the laptop!
You could ditch the solenoid and use a ATMega32u4 that can act as a HID device to send a keypress signal.
I'm mildly surprised OP's laptop keeps the bluetooth radio powered up while asleep, but I would be a lot more surprised to find one that doesn't work with USB HID.
I was a little surprised as well, but I think it's because the keyboard / mouse I use (and the ESP32) all use Bluetooth LE specifically.
I looked at USB solutions first actually, but then decided to try ESP Home solution since I was already familiar with the system.
I definitely thought about trying something physical like that too, but mostly as a fallback plan!
My thoughts were a switchbot, for a non diy version. You put the bot on the laptop power button or keyboard.
I was thinking of using an electro magnet to trigger the lid switch. Maybe we are just fans rube goldberg setups :D
Have you tried
Simpler: use a smart wallplug, configure your bios to always start after powerloss.
I actually tried something like this, the laptop BIOS didn't have any settings to tweak for A/C power changes. However, it does wake from sleep after plugging in. The issue is, it immediately goes back to sleep (within seconds). Tried quite a few things to try to stop that behavior (e.g. running Power Toys Awake) but had no luck.
So that's when I switched to ESP Keyboard.
Ah yes, because it's a laptop, I know lots of desktop have the option tho.
I think most laptop’s still have the option of whether to boot or not when you plug them in with a dead battery.
Why did you need final fantasy's Warrior of Light to wake up your laptop?
Allagans secretly powering Home Assistant
That is for waking from sleep, or from shutdown?
Oh yeah I should have specified this is to wake from sleep, not a complete shutdown. So not a complete replacement for WoL.
Wire the power switch to a transistor and ESP
Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io