Calibre Compainion error communicating with device

[Purple Lady]

I had a problem with multiple authors and I thought that my problem was that I didn't have authors formatted correctly and I didn't so I fixed them. I connected wirelessly and that still didn't fix it so I deleted the book and downloaded it again using the wireless connection and that didn't appear to work either, but I think this is where my connection problems must have started. Calibre showed my device as still connected and had the checkmarks for the books including the one I had a problem with, but that book was not on my device so the last send to device did not work.

At some point in all this my Nexus 7 stopped communicating with Calibre and got the following error:

calibre, version 0.9.36
ERROR: Error: Error communicating with device

There was a timeout while communicating with the device in function: Device did not respond in reasonable time

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 85, in run
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 476, in _books
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\smart_device_app\driver.py", line 49, in _synchronizer
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\smart_device_app\driver.py", line 1026, in books
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\smart_device_app\driver.py", line 580, in _call_client
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\smart_device_app\driver.py", line 613, in _receive_from_client
TimeoutError: There was a timeout while communicating with the device in function: Device did not respond in reasonable time

I have had this happen before, but couldn't remember exactly what I did so I didn't report it, but I do remember connecting and disconnecting a few times in a row and deleting a book. I had to reboot the tablet to be able to connect again - force stopping CC didn't work. Here are the steps I took this time, but I still am unsure exactly where the connection problems occurred:

1. fixed the authors in the book in Calibre.
2. connected wirelessly to Calibre.
3. checked the author grouping and still didn't see the books I expected. (I was looking at the wrong author, so the wireless connection may have fixed it)
4. disconnected using CC so I could delete the book.
5. deleted the book in CC
6. connected wirelessly to Calibre.
7. sent the book again.
8. checked the author grouping and still didn't see the books I expected so I looked for the book itself and the book wasn't there even though Calibre showed it as being there.

At this point I noticed that CC showed not connected so I tried to connect again and got the error msg.

I have CC 3.05, Calibre .9.36, Nexus 7 4.2.2

[chaley]

I confess that I am at a loss.

I am not sure what you are saying about the author formatting. Does calibre believe the book has multiple authors?

What I understand you to be saying about sending is that you sent a book (some books?), calibre thought the send had finished and the books were on the device, but in fact they were not on the device.

Do you have a lot of books on the device? A test using CC with very large libraries (approx 10,000 books) that I have been running with the very kind assistance of DoctorOhh and Sefiriot has exposed some problems that we are fixing. In particular, the timeout you saw can occur when sending many books at one go. Our first fix wasn't good enough. We are preparing now to test a second, more conservative, repair.

Does the error now happen on every send? For sends of books that do not have multiple authors?

The need for a reboot implies that the database manager in Android was confused, or that FCing an app does not release its resources. Either is possible.

What I am going to suggest is unsatisfactory on several levels, but it is the only thing I can think of to do. Sometime this week we intend to release a CC update that contains the large-library changes. It also contains something we should have done ages ago, a debug log that a CC user can send to us. Having that debug log will help enormously when tracing problems like you describe, because we will be able to see the internal sequence of events in CC. The suggestion: we revisit this issue once you have the new version, and assuming that you continue to have a problem.

[Purple Lady]

Sorry for the confusion. At first I thought there was a problem with multiple authors in CC, but I did not have the author field formatted properly. When it was properly formatted in Calibre it still wasn't showing up in CC, but that was because sending the book again did not work even though Calibre showed it as being on the device. I was about to report the author problem I thought I had when I decided to check the book on my device instead of checking for the book by looking at one of the authors in question. I thought I removed enough text about the problem I thought I had to prevent confusion, but I guess I didn't. The only real problem was the connection problem/error.

The connection problem happened only once before and it was a similar situation where I connected and sent a book to the device and then disconnected and deleted the book in CC and then connected again and sent the book again. I only have about 400 books on my device, so that's not a problem. It may have been how quickly I connected and disconnected repeatedly. Here's the steps I went thru again - the connection problem happened somewhere here, but I don't know exactly where.

1. fixed the authors in the book in Calibre.
2. connected wirelessly to Calibre.
3. checked the author grouping and still didn't see the books I expected. (I was looking at the wrong author, so the wireless connection may have fixed it)
4. disconnected using CC so I could delete the book.
5. deleted the book in CC
6. connected wirelessly to Calibre.
7. sent the book again.
8. checked the author grouping and still didn't see the books I expected so I looked for the book itself and the book wasn't there even though Calibre showed it as being there.

At this point I noticed that CC showed not connected so I tried to connect again and got the error msg. I had to reboot the tablet to be able to connect again - force stopping CC didn't work.

If this isn't enough info or if I am till not phrasing my problem correctly, I can wait for the new version and see if I can make it happen again.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Sorry for the confusion. ... The only real problem was the connection problem/error.

No problem at all. It is difficult for a user to know what information to supply.

The connection problem happened only once before and it was a similar situation where I connected and sent a book to the device and then disconnected and deleted the book in CC and then connected again and sent the book again. I only have about 400 books on my device, so that's not a problem. It may have been how quickly I connected and disconnected repeatedly.
...
If this isn't enough info or if I am till not phrasing my problem correctly, I can wait for the new version and see if I can make it happen again.

I can't see anything in CC that can explain a failure with that sequence, so waiting seems to be the right approach. Thank you for telling us about the problem, and thank you for your patience.