Another remote access question

[jjansen]

I saw that Chaley answered a similar question to this back in 2014. My question is a little more specific and just wondering if someone has a quick answer.

I have put Calibre Companion on my mother's tablet. Her technical skills are non existent and I look after all the updating of her database. I will be travelling for a very extended period in my motorhome in Europe. I will have my PC with Calibre on it with me. I would like to be able to call my mother and get her to click on Connect and have her connect to my PC a long way away. I could then do all the updating and control from Calibre. Is there something that I can do on my PC to make it visible to CC remotely? I am not a technical novice but communications was never my forte. If someone can point me in the right direction I can try and do the appropriate research. Thanks......Jackie

[chaley]

You can do this but it will require setup and may not always work.

What you do to set this up:

1. Ensure that your laptop is either directly connected to the internet (e.g., its own cellular connection) or is connected behind a router that you control.
2. If using a router, set it up to forward the wireless device connection port (normally 9090) to the laptop.
3. Set up some dynamic DNS name. Set up your laptop or your router to update the dynamic address with the current public IP.
4. On your mother's device, set up CC to connect to the dynDNS name selected above and the port picked in step 1.
5. Ensure that the firewall on the laptop permits incoming connections to calibre/on the WD port.

To use it, you:

1. Start calibre on the laptop, ensuring that the wireless device driver is listening on the chosen port.
2. If using a router, ensure that port forwarding is turned on.
3. Ensure that your mother's device is connected (somehow) to the internet.
4. Ensure that the DynDNS mapping is correct.
5. One your mother's device, ask CC to connect to calibre.

I have semi-tested this by forwarding a port on my home router to my calibre machine then using CC on my phone to connect via the cell network to my external IP address. The connection worked.

Some complexities over and above the setup:

1. There is no guarantee that the network you are connected to while traveling will permit incoming connections. If it does not then connections will fail. Hotels etc are notorious for this.
2. You might consider using a phone as a mobile hotspot. In this case you will need to install some port forwarding app on the phone because it is acting like a router.
3. You could consider getting a cellular router. I have no experience with such things.
4. Using the cell network could cost you a fortune if you don't have a good roaming plan.

It might be easier to put your library in the cloud and then use a remote control app to do the updates on your mother's device. In this case the problem becomes ensuring that the cloud is up-to-date, and ensuring that you can access your mother's device through all the various firewalls etc.

[dwig]

An alternate method would be to setup a "remote desktop" arrangement where Calibre and CC would be running on your mom's computer and you use a remote desktop connection to operate her computer.

My personal config uses TeamViewer, which is available free for personal use, for this and similar purposes. There are other remote desktop tools as well. An advantage of this approach is that you can manage anything and everything on her computer, not just the calibre library.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by dwig

An alternate method would be to setup a "remote desktop" arrangement where Calibre and CC would be running on your mom's computer and you use a remote desktop connection to operate her computer.

My personal config uses TeamViewer, which is available free for personal use, for this and similar purposes. There are other remote desktop tools as well. An advantage of this approach is that you can manage anything and everything on her computer, not just the calibre library.

I don't think OP's mother has a computer as such, she uses CC on an Android tablet that the OP refreshes from her laptop.

My guess is the OP takes her laptop over to her mother's house, connects the tablet to it via whatever, and syncs her mother's CC library with a Calibre library on the laptop.

@jjansen - I'd go with the CC cloud solution suggested by chaley, but I'd give Remote Control a miss, instead I'd show your mother how to use CC with the library on the cloud and leave her with clear written instructions -on paper. I'd give Google Drive a miss too, the CC FAQ explains why.

Try to find someone (local community centre, library) that your mother can call should she get a problem, I do a couple of days a week at my local library, at a pinch we will do house calls - but not to Canada

You would use a file sync tool to keep a mirror copy of the library in the cloud up to date as and when you could, you would only be syncing the changes after the first time so it shouldn't take long - maybe 15 minutes on a slow link. Whenever you refreshed the library you'd let your mother know, by voice call, SMS, whatever.

As chaley suggests connectivity could be problematic with you moving around, especially in remote locations. My experience with Remote Control is when it doesn't work, you really need someone at the other end with a bit of now how. I say this based on my experience of using RC in commercial scenario's - to far away bank branches, remote mining sites etc.

BR

[dwig]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I don't think OP's mother has a computer as such, she uses CC on an Android tablet that the OP refreshes from her laptop.
...

BR

Yup, I missed that aspect.

TeamViewer can handle controlling an Android or iOS device from a PC or Mac, but only the more expensive licenses enable that functionality. Those licenses are way to expensive for any "personal" use.

[jjansen]

Thanks everyone. I had thought of using the cloud but that would put the onus on my mother to add and delete from her tablet. I was trying to avoid this other than possibly as a backup. I had thought that if I could configure her router somehow CC would think I was on the same network and all she would need to do would be press connect and I could do the adding and deleting from my end. I think Chaley's suggestions might take me where to go but I need to read them a little slower and more carefully. As I said, communications is not my area of expertise. I plan on setting up a version in the cloud specific to my mother but I am not confident that she can use make it work. I will try and figure out how much I can automate. Actually I guess that I have two questions about the cloud. I will check myself but if I am way off base let me know. I know that CC has some different options for syncing on connect. If I had her connect to the cloud could items that she had read or deleted be deleted from the cloud version? Could any new options automatically be imported to CC? If she deleted items would they be imported again on the sync or not?

Again, love this forum and love this product. Thanks all.

[jjansen]

Sorry, I just did some reading on the cloud connection which I should have done before I entered my last response. I really just wanted to thank everyone for there responses and came up with additional thoughts while I was typing. Shouldn't do that.

Anyway, I see that cloud is like the connect server so books my mother deletes won't be deleted in the cloud. I am going to do some testing with just a few books and see how it all works. Maybe I can do this instead of my wireless connectivity option. I am not sure yet.

Thanks again everyone.

BetterRed - do you have something against house calls in Canada? It is a very nice country honest! I am not sure if our libraries in our fair size cities have people as nice as you are in Australia but I may drop in and ask them. The problem would be finding anyone who had heard of CC. Thanks again.

[chaley]

@jjansen: another way to do what you want, albeit in a rather complicated way, is to put your calibre library on a computer in some data center. For example, I have mine on a shared virtual server hosted by linode, which I use as an always-up content server (and several other things).

I could also use it to run the calibre gui using remote access (VNC). If I did this (really, if you did this) then your mother could connect to that server as a wireless device without problems. You could connect to that server using a remote client (some free VNC software) and pilot calibre to do whatever you want to her device.

Admittedly this solution is technical and not very mainstream, and admittedly you must pay for the virtual server, but if you set it up then you might find it useful in other ways. For example, and this is why we use it, my family can access my library 24/7 from anywhere in the world, using CC or a web browser. All I need to do is ensure that the library on the server is kept up-to-date, which I do using Dropbox.

All that said, if your mother can make do with telephone support and the cloud connection while you are traveling then that seems best. It is easy to set up and easy to maintain.

[jjansen]

Thanks to everyone on this forum. I know that this isn't exactly what I asked for in the beginning but based on the responses here I did some more work with Onedrive and the cloud. I think that if I make the cloud my mother's books only, show minimal metadata and only have one method of connection (cloud) I can make this usable by her. It looks quite good in my testing. If I have her connect whenever I add just a couple of books then there won't be too many new books for her to handle at once. When I come back (8 months later) I will see what she has deleted from CC and update my master Calibre. Thanks for pointing me in this direction and for being understanding of the problem.

Chaley, I think I will test your solutions when I can for other purposes. Thanks again for the great product.......Jackie

PS any readers here from Scandinavia - that is where I plan on spending the summer in my North American motorhome and why I won't be in Canada to directly support my mother. All I need now is some wifi north of the Arctic Circle!

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by jjansen

Thanks to everyone on this forum. I know that this isn't exactly what I asked for in the beginning but based on the responses here I did some more work with Onedrive and the cloud. I think that if I make the cloud my mother's books only, show minimal metadata and only have one method of connection (cloud) I can make this usable by her. It looks quite good in my testing. If I have her connect whenever I add just a couple of books then there won't be too many new books for her to handle at once. When I come back (8 months later) I will see what she has deleted from CC and update my master Calibre. Thanks for pointing me in this direction and for being understanding of the problem.

Chaley, I think I will test your solutions when I can for other purposes. Thanks again for the great product.......Jackie

PS any readers here from Scandinavia - that is where I plan on spending the summer in my North American motorhome and why I won't be in Canada to directly support my mother. All I need now is some wifi north of the Arctic Circle!

If your mom has her own pc. You could setup a shared Dropbox account for her where you put new books. And her calibre auto imports them for her. Then using the reading list plugin all the new books can be auto uploaded to her device when she connects to calibre on her pc using calibre companion.

[BetterRed]

@Dopedangel - it has been established the OP's mother does not have a PC. See posts 3 and 4. Ψ²

@jjansen - my main objection to house calls in Canada is that I would have to spend a small fortune on warm clothes, as I did first time I was there almost 40 years ago.

BR

[Dopedangel]

The op never mentioned that her mom didn't have her own PC you just assumed it. The op only said the mom was not tech savvy. But just in case she didn't I started my suggestion with a if.

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