Browse your calibre book collection from anywhere

[solomon]

Originally Posted by starrigger

In Calibre, I turned on the Content Server, and I tested it with the test button. A-okay.

Try it from a web browser on another computer on your home network. If that works, then you likely don't have a firewall/AV type issue.

Richard

[starrigger]

Good suggestion. Yes, that worked, using the computer's name.

So there's something about connecting from the PDA. Or from Freda.

[solomon]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Good suggestion. Yes, that worked, using the computer's name.

So there's something about connecting from the PDA. Or from Freda.

Can you hit that exact same URL from the PDA's web browser?

Richard

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by solomon

Can you hit that exact same URL from the PDA's web browser?

Richard

Hm. No. "Cannot connect with current settings."

[solomon]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Hm. No.

See if you can find out the PDA's IP address and ping that from one of your home computers. PDA WiFi can be .... interesting ....

Richard

[chaley]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Hm. No. "Cannot connect with current settings."

You almost certainly will not be able to use the computer name from your PDA. Without going into alphabet soup, windows machines have a proprietary system for sharing their names with each other, and most PDAs don't play.

In addition, 127.0.0.1 will not work. That is always the local machine, never some other machine. You need to find the real IP address of the machine running the calibre server. On windows, one way to do this on all versions of windows is to open a command box (start, run, type 'cmd' and OK), then type the command 'ipconfig'. It will print a lot of gobbledygoop, but buried in there will be a line IPv4 address ..... On that line will be a set of four numbers separated by periods. The first two numbers will almost certainly be 192.168. The third number is probably 0 or 1, but not necessarily (mine isn't). The relevant portion of mine looks like:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::1c6a:f6f5:6049:83f6%11
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.220.9
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.220.1

Once you have that number, open the browser on your PDA and try the URL http://192.168.x.y:8080/ where x and y (and in fact all the numbers) come from the output of ipconfig. When I do that, I get the calibre server. If that works for you, then try that URL in Freda.

Good luck!

[Jim Chapman]

One other thought on connecting from Freda: if http://192.168.x.y:8080/ doesn't work, try http://192.168.x.y:8080/index.htm . It may be that Freda's URL-accessing function will work better if it's given a file name to work with.

EDIT: I think I found the answer. Use http://192.168.x.y:8080/stanza

But for some reason, Freda 2.0 build 102 is not picking up book names; I will fix this 'real soon now'.

Jim

[chaley]

I got Freda to connect to the content server. It was easy, once given the recipe for the secret sauce .

Steps:
1) start the calibre server.
2) determine the IP address of the machine running the server. This is OS dependent. A previous post described a way to do this on windows.
3) start Freda & open Library
4) press actions, add books, Add OPDS catalog.
5) Enter the URL http://your_ip_address:8080/stanza (the secret sauce)

If all goes well, you end up with a list of choices to choose from.

Jim, as long as you are reading here (would you prefer that I take this over to the Freda thread?): Unfortunately, things go downhill from there. I can navigate to 'by author', then choose an author, but then I get an empty screen. If I use firefox, and follow the same route, I see books. I don't know which end has it wrong (calibre or Freda). In addition, I can't convince Freda to keep my URL. How do I save it? Finally, I see 'Calibre Search' on each page, but I can't do anything with it.

Edit: Jim, looks like I posted just as you did

[solomon]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

EDIT: I think I found the answer. Use http://192.168.x.y:8080/stanza

Kovid said he added /opds (vs /stanza) for us in 0.7, so you might try that - otherwise you'll only get .epub format books. I've not been able to test since I upgraded Calibre to 0.7.1 but that URL is supposed to be OPDS without format restrictions....

Richard

[LeapinLar]

Originally Posted by solomon

I'm confused.... you're trying to use a reader app *OTHER* than Stanza? Stanza works fine on my iPod Touch using the directions I linked above.

Richard

Yes, I like the "ereader" software. I has a lot of the Stanza features but has one extra, "autoscroll". I get tired of flipping the small pages every few paragraphs and autoscroll fixes that problem. I don't know why Stanza does not have that since it seems to have every other bell and whistle. And even GoodReader has it.

[solomon]

Originally Posted by LeapinLar

Yes, I like the "ereader" software.

Doh! Gotcha. I was reading that as a generic term for ereader software vs a piece of software named "ereader" from ereader.com

Perhaps contact them and ask how to use it with an OPDS source? That's what Calibre provides when you add /stanza or /opds to the URL you're using for the server....

HTH,
Richard

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by chaley

You almost certainly will not be able to use the computer name from your PDA. Without going into alphabet soup, windows machines have a proprietary system for sharing their names with each other, and most PDAs don't play.

Ah, then that probably renders it not worth the trouble from my perspective. We have several computers on the home network, and if I recall from past experience, they pick up different IP numbers each day, depending on the order in which they're turned on each day. I'm not going to go through the hassle of discovering the day's IP number each time I want to copy a book.

Interesting that Stanza on the iTouch could use the computer name, but not Windows Mobile.

I'll devote my experimentation to seeing if I can copy from Calibre to the SD card without the unfortunate results I got yesterday. If that works, it'd probably be faster and easier, anyway.

[solomon]

Originally Posted by starrigger

I'm not going to go through the hassle of discovering the day's IP number each time I want to copy a book.

I don't think you'll have that issue myself, but of course I don't know your network. The other poster has a much dimmer view of TCP/IP name resolution than I do

Richard

[starrigger]

Well, I just had apparent success popping the PDA's SD card into my laptop and using Calibre's new "connect to folder" function to connect to that. Much quicker. I don't think anything went wrong with that. (I had a bad experience the first time I tried it.)

But of course, if Calibre could be persuaded to recognize the SD card in the device, that would be even better.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by starrigger

We have several computers on the home network, and if I recall from past experience, they pick up different IP numbers each day, depending on the order in which they're turned on each day. I'm not going to go through the hassle of discovering the day's IP number each time I want to copy a book.

Hmm... I'm not sure if you are aware... but, you can use Static IPs on your network. You can also reserve certain IPs for certain Mac addresses. Finally, you can set the DHCP lease to be much longer than 1 day so they don't get a different IP address.

Oh... and usually you can connect to a device using the host id, netbios name... whatever you want to call it.

BOb