Ability to schedule to turn on/off Calibre?

[JayKindle]

I was wondering if there is a feature in Calibre to be able to schedule the program to turn on/off on a daily basis?

I have over 700 books and user manuals. I've notice that the program seems to eat up Mem Usage as it continues to be active during a whole week--even though it is minimized to my tray bar. It gets to a point that it slows down my XP machine or Calibre becomes unresponsive when I try to restore it to a full window--I only have 2GB or RAM on this machine.

I would love to only fetch the News and then have the program turn off during the rest of the day. And only turn it on manually when I need to send a new book to my Kindle or add a new one. So I would like to be able to schedule it to turn on at 5:55am and turn off at 7:00am so it finishes fetching the news and emailing it to my Kindle 3.

Hopefully there is a way without having to use a third party program. Thanks.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JayKindle

I was wondering if there is a feature in Calibre to be able to schedule the program to turn on/off on a daily basis?

I have over 700 books and user manuals. I've notice that the program seems to eat up Mem Usage as it continues to be active during a whole week--even though it is minimized to my tray bar. It gets to a point that it slows down my XP machine or Calibre becomes unresponsive when I try to restore it to a full window--I only have 2GB or RAM on this machine.

I would love to only fetch the News and then have the program turn off during the rest of the day. And only turn it on manually when I need to send a new book to my Kindle or add a new one. So I would like to be able to schedule it to turn on at 5:55am and turn off at 7:00am so it finishes fetching the news and emailing it to my Kindle 3.

Hopefully there is a way without having to use a third party program. Thanks.

Windows has Scheduled Tasks
All you have to do is set it up for Calibre
Be sure to allow sufficient time to run the fetch and convert.

[JayKindle]

How do you schedule it to turn off after a period of run time?

Calibre requires us to use CTRL+Q in order to close it on the tray bar. Setting the schedule to only run for about an hour or two and then end the task isn't sufficient, since it requires another step to fully close the program.

[Divingduck]

Usinng Calibre Help and command line interface will help you: Click
You need to look at shutdown.
Setup 2 tasks, one for starting and one for shutdown calibre.

[JayKindle]

Originally Posted by Divingduck

Usinng Calibre Help and command line interface will help you: Click
You need to look at shutdown.
Setup 2 tasks, one for starting and one for shutdown calibre.

I'm a bit lost here. Tutorial?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JayKindle

I'm a bit lost here. Tutorial?

Write it

This is the first time I have seen this question since I signed in at MR to hang at the Calibre section.

But if find your XP Machine geting boggy, just shut down Calibre at that time and let Scheduled Tasks restart it in time for the Morning News.

[FizzyWater]

I'd just like to add I've noticed the same thing - that at least on this (XP) laptop, Calibre slowly eats up my free memory until it either crashes or I shut it down and reopen it.

I don't leave my computer running overnight, so I can't say what would happen if I left everything on for a week.

I wish I could tell you when it started...seems to me it was in the last 1-3 months. It didn't always do this. I was hoping an upgrade some week would fix it, when someone more techie than me had been able to provide the right specs to aid in the correction of it.

[veezh]

Originally Posted by JayKindle

How do you schedule it to turn off after a period of run time?

After you've created the task in Scheduled Tasks, right click the task, select Properties, then click on the Settings tab. Tick the box beside 'Stop the task if it runs for _ hours'. I've set the number of hours to '1', so that after one hour, Windows closes calibre without me having to do anything.

[Divingduck]

Originally Posted by JayKindle

I'm a bit lost here. Tutorial?

Here it is.
The first schedule is "calibre.exe" with parameter daily, start time at 5:55. I guess you have already manage this one.
The second schedule is "calibre.exe -s", daily start time at 7:00. The parameter -s means shutdown and this will close calibre on a regular way.
And, as theduck already pointed out: Be sure to allow sufficient time to run the fetch and convert. That’s all.

[JayKindle]

Originally Posted by veezh

After you've created the task in Scheduled Tasks, right click the task, select Properties, then click on the Settings tab. Tick the box beside 'Stop the task if it runs for _ hours'. I've set the number of hours to '1', so that after one hour, Windows closes calibre without me having to do anything.

@veezh, Thanks! This method did work. When I first tested this--after theducks mentioned it. I noticed that the traybar icon would not disappear within the time I would set it to end the task. But after a few more minutes, when I put my pointer over it, it quickly disappears--so it does shut down. Just leaves a shadow behind that it did run--I guess? So there is no need to create two different schedule tasks for this application--one will do just fine.

@Divingduck, thanks for your last tutorial. Using your instructions I was able to make the program run only in the traybar, this way no window will open during the scheduled task.

The formula is:

C:\PROGRA~1\Calibre2\calibre.exe --start-in-tray

I really hope there is a way they can investigate why it eats up memory when the application runs for a long period of time. Perhaps a memory leak or it just doesn't let go the memory and it keeps on growing to the point that it will just eat up everything it can--until you have to manually restart it.

Thanks again everyone.. consider my request solved.

P.S. what's the story behind the members using "ducks" in their username? Any relation or just a "quacky" coincidence?