Remote access to calibre library

[NSILMike]

Moderator Notice
Moved from wish list to own thread

Originally Posted by chaley

I confess to a bit of confusion.

[snipped]
@NSILMike: what is your goal? Do you want to get access to the books in your calibre library from somewhere other than your home network? Or to connect as a wireless device to sync metadata and ...? Or to do something else?

BTW: in all my posts I use CC to mean Calibre Companion. I never use it to mean Calibre Cloud.

My goal is to have a means to remotely sync news with only an app on my Nexus 7 (or Kindle...etc.) That could be a connection to my home PC while traveling, or perhaps a connection to a cloud-based resource that my home PC updates.

[chaley]

The discussion in the "CC and the cloud" thread is germane to this task to the extent that it is discussing various ways to sync with the cloud. Given your specific needs, there are better ways to solve the problem.

There are several ways for you to do this:

1. Run calibre's content server on your home machine and make it visible over the internet.
2. Make calibre's wireless device driver visible over the internet.
3. Run a 24/7 content server in the cloud and sync your library to that.
4. Have calibre's GUI automatically email news to you.
5. Use calibre's command line interface to fetch the news and email it to you.
6. Sync your calibre library to cloud storage and fetch it from there.

More details on the above choices:

1. Content server on home machine. This would allow you to connect to calibre from anywhere in the world and download whatever you want, including news. Setting it up requires that the computer running calibre be turned on during the hours you want to connect, and for you to "open a port" on your home network so that the content server is visible. Exactly how you do that depends on your home router and network. This is the normal way to do what you want. It has fewer security and stability issues than some other choices.
2. Make calibre's wireless device driver visible over the internet. This is done is a similar way as making calibre's content server visible. You "open a port" to the wireless device driver, permitting you to connect as a wireless device from anywhere in the world. Of course, unless you also implement remote access to the computer you won't be able to talk to calibre and send books, etc, but news and reading-list-scheduled items would automatically download. This option has some possible security issues because the wireless device driver was not designed to be internet-facing. For example, the password is sent in the clear over the connection. You can eliminate these issues by using SSH tunneling, but doing so introduces another layer of complexity.
3. Run a 24/7 content server in the cloud and sync your library to that. This is an alternative to the first option, eliminating the need to have the home calibre machine on 24/7. You would set up a calibre server on a "cloud processor" (something like a Virtual Private Server, or VPS). This is what I do. There is more information in the calibre thread How to set up a content server on a VPS?
4. Have calibre's GUI automatically email news to you. You can give calibre a number of email addresses where news is to be sent when downloaded. The news is sent as an attachment on the email.
5. Use calibre's command line interface to fetch the news and email it to you. This is similar to the above but does not require calbre's GUI to be running. You would schedule tasks that use calibre's command line interface to fetch the news "book(s)" and then email it/them to you.
6. Sync your calibre library to cloud storage and fetch it from there. You could use any number of apps to get the news "books" from the cloud to your device. You would know the "author" of the news books so finding them is easy. The difficulty is ensuring that the sync process does not damage your library. The normal advice is to turn off syncing when you start calibre, then turn it back on when you exit calibre.

[NSILMike]

Many thanks!