Browse your calibre book collection from anywhere

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

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

Well, I couldn't resist giving it one more try. It doesn't work using the computer's network name, but it does work using the numerical IP address. As others said, though, the view seen by Freda is currently not useful, though I'm sure Jim will fix that. Still, in all, though it seems it might be useful in some circumstances, really it's easier just to copy the books to the SD card. Probably it's a more useful feature for phones than for my PDA.

I mostly leave the wireless turned off on the Axim. Don't have much need, and it sucks down the battery like crazy.

[solomon]

Originally Posted by starrigger

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

There are other threads on this - but I believe there's an FAQ entry on the Calibre site about a pretty easy way to get Kovid the information he needs for this. Basically you connect the device, click a button in Calibre and mail Kovid the log file

What wireless router do you have? As PilotBob said, there are a number of ways we could get your router configured so you wouldn't have any issue with IP addresses. I'm slightly surprised it doesn't default to providing a DNS - so your PDA can address by name.

Richard

[chaley]

Originally Posted by solomon

There are other threads on this - but I believe there's an FAQ entry on the Calibre site about a pretty easy way to get Kovid the information he needs for this. Basically you connect the device, click a button in Calibre and mail Kovid the log file

Problem is that many phones (most, it appears) do not identify their storage cards well enough for calibre to distinguish between them. My HTC is like that, which is why I built the 'Connect to folder' feature for calibre 0.7.

What wireless router do you have? As PilotBob said, there are a number of ways we could get your router configured so you wouldn't have any issue with IP addresses. I'm slightly surprised it doesn't default to providing a DNS - so your PDA can address by name.

Many routers don't support WINS (my DG834 does not), which is required to translate NETBIOS names into DNS names. In addition, most PDAs don't support it either.

There are some things one can do about the lack of a real DNS name. The easiest that I know of (and it isn't particularly easy) requires two steps. First, set up DHCP on the home router to give fixed private-space IP addresses to the clients on the home net. Second, go to dyndns and allocate a name, then give it the private-space address reserved for the machine running the calibre server. For example, if I allocated mrbill.dyn-o-saur.com (yes, that choice is possible) and set the IP appropriately, then I could access my calibre server from *inside* my home net with the URL http://mrbill.dyn-o-saur.con:8080/stansa. It won't work from outside the home net; fixing that is another discussion.

[solomon]

Originally Posted by chaley

Many routers don't support WINS (ky DG834 does not), which is required to translate NETBIOS names into DNS names. In addition, most PDAs don't support it either.

Agreed, and we're probably getting a bit far afield here In my experience though, when Windoze registers with a DHCP server that DHCP server can easily provide DNS services to the PDA - I run DD-WRT now on my router, but I'm 95% sure even my antique D-Link did that. You might find that you need mypcname.comcast.home or some other non-obvious FQDN to get the router to serve up the DNS name, but even that's not terrible once you figure out what is needed.

Regardless, as many folks have said - simply assigning a static IP to the Calibre machine (ideally in the router's DHCP config) will let one use an IP address to access the content server without having to frequently (ever?) figure out what IP that machine got this time.

Richard

[starrigger]

Um, yeah. I'm using the wireless router Verizon supplied me with, and have no idea what brand it is. I know I could go in and muck with settings, but it's working in every other respect for a variety of machines, and I don't want to fix what ain't broke.

As for Calibre not recognizing my PDA (with its SD card in place), I think the problem is that it doesn't show up as a drive letter when linked by USB. I can navigate to the device and card in Win Explorer, but it doesn't show up in the Calibre dialog to "connect to folder." If that dialogue could see the device itself as Win Explorer does, then I think I'd be in business.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by starrigger

As for Calibre not recognizing my PDA (with its SD card in place), I think the problem is that it doesn't show up as a drive letter when linked by USB. I can navigate to the device and card in Win Explorer, but it doesn't show up in the Calibre dialog to "connect to folder." If that dialogue could see the device itself as Win Explorer does, then I think I'd be in business.

Out of curiosity, can other programs 'see' the device? Can you open a file on the device with some non-Microsoft software? If yes, then post or PM me the exact make, model, and SW version of the device, and I will try to work out if there is a way to make Calibre's dialog see the path.

We should probably take this discussion elsewhere. If you answer me, could you do it by starting a new thread?

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by chaley

Out of curiosity, can other programs 'see' the device?

Word cannot. I'll try others later.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by chaley

Out of curiosity, can other programs 'see' the device? Can you open a file on the device with some non-Microsoft software? If yes, then post or PM me the exact make, model, and SW version of the device, and I will try to work out if there is a way to make Calibre's dialog see the path.

We should probably take this discussion elsewhere. If you answer me, could you do it by starting a new thread?

Charles, it sounds like he's accessing a Windows Mobile PDA through ActiveSync. If so, then only software that is AS aware could access the PDA. An AS driver could probably be written for Calibre, but I believe Kovid said he isn't interested in writing one. When the device is connected via AS, it shows up in Windows File Explorer, but has no drive letter. I have several Windows Mobile devices, and the newer ones can connect either via AS, or as a USB disk.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Charles, it sounds like he's accessing a Windows Mobile PDA through ActiveSync. If so, then only software that is AS aware could access the PDA. An AS driver could probably be written for Calibre, but I believe Kovid said he isn't interested in writing one. When the device is connected via AS, it shows up in Windows File Explorer, but has no drive letter. I have several Windows Mobile devices, and the newer ones can connect either via AS, or as a USB disk.

Correct.

[chimaera]

Having a weird problem with the Content Server since upgrading to the 0.7.x version - hoping someone can help...

Firstly I'm on an Android phone (HTC Desire) and have both Aldiko and Wordplayer installed (as an aside, I really don't like Wordplayer much)

Until moving to 0.7.x I could point either app to http://<server>:<port>/stanza to browse the library 'natively' within Aldiko. Alternatively I could point to http://<server>:<port>/ and Aldiko would chop out to a web client to pull the books down. Functional but very clumsy and unintuitive.

Anyway, since moving to 0.7.x the custom collection option no longer works - I can connect to the server, but I cannot drill past the first set of filters (author, title, series and so on) - when I make a selection it highlights briefly and then clears with no further change.

As for Wordplayer it won't accept the IP address of the server.

I'm guessing that it has something to do with the 'opds' that I see mentioned around, but beyond that, anyone have any idea how I can get it working again? One of the primary reasons I locked onto using Calibre was the content server to allow me to pull books onto my phone when away from home...

[solomon]

Originally Posted by chimaera

Having a weird problem with the Content Server since upgrading to the 0.7.x version - hoping someone can help...

I'm on my phone or I'd link it, but find my thread on Trook problems for a hack. the new html in 0.7.x breaks some apps. yours is the 3rd I know of.

[blak4dr]

Originally Posted by chimaera

Having a weird problem with the Content Server since upgrading to the 0.7.x version - hoping someone can help...

Firstly I'm on an Android phone (HTC Desire) and have both Aldiko and Wordplayer installed (as an aside, I really don't like Wordplayer much)

Until moving to 0.7.x I could point either app to http://<server>:<port>/stanza to browse the library 'natively' within Aldiko. Alternatively I could point to http://<server>:<port>/ and Aldiko would chop out to a web client to pull the books down. Functional but very clumsy and unintuitive.

Anyway, since moving to 0.7.x the custom collection option no longer works - I can connect to the server, but I cannot drill past the first set of filters (author, title, series and so on) - when I make a selection it highlights briefly and then clears with no further change.

As for Wordplayer it won't accept the IP address of the server.

I'm guessing that it has something to do with the 'opds' that I see mentioned around, but beyond that, anyone have any idea how I can get it working again? One of the primary reasons I locked onto using Calibre was the content server to allow me to pull books onto my phone when away from home...

Just try replacing http://<server>:<port>/stanza with http://<server>:<port>/opds and see what happens.

[chimaera]

Originally Posted by blak4dr

Just try replacing http://<server>:<port>/stanza with http://<server>:<port>/opds and see what happens.

I should have said, I tried that after finding the suggestion in another thread and got the same outcome, but thanks for the suggestion

[solomon]

Originally Posted by solomon

I'm on my phone or I'd link it, but find my thread on Trook problems for a hack. the new html in 0.7.x breaks some apps. yours is the 3rd I know of.

Sorry for the delay here's the thread - try the hack, it's working great for me with Trook.

Richard

[chimaera]

ohh awesome thanks - I'll have a crack at that when I get home tonight