calibre-sync: Automatically download books from your Calibre Content Server onto Kobo

[mishagale]

As far as I was aware, there was no way, without significant hacking (like installing an alternative to Nickel such as Koreader), to make your Kobo automatically download books from your Calibre library to your device, over WiFi. So I wrote a daemon which does just that.

It can be installed without needing any other hacks or launchers, since it simply runs in the background as a daemon process. To configure it, modify the calibre-sync.ini file on your SD card.

DISCLAIMER
I'd say it's unlikely that this software will cause any damage to your device, but it is new and not extensively tested. I advise you to take a backup before installing. I am not responsible in the unlikely event that you lose data or brick your device.

I'm pretty sure it works on a Kobo Touch running firmware 3.0.1, since that's what I have. I'd be very grateful to anyone running other devices and firmwares who can either confirm it works, or submit bug reports.

Downloads and setup instructions can be found here.

[sherman]

This looks rather interesting.

Have you looked into using the calibre wireless driver rather than the content server? Would such a thing be possible?

This seems a little to broad to me, to get a limited number of books, one would have to create a seperate (virtual) library, and only share that on the content server.

[mishagale]

Originally Posted by sherman

This looks rather interesting.

Have you looked into using the calibre wireless driver rather than the content server? Would such a thing be possible?

I haven't really looked into using the wireless driver, but it's something I'm thinking about for a future release. Probably shouldn't hold your breath for it yet though.

Originally Posted by sherman

This seems a little to broad to me, to get a limited number of books, one would have to create a seperate (virtual) library, and only share that on the content server.

If you just want one or two books, you could just open the content server in the Kobo browser and download them manually.

However, another feature I'm planning to add, probably quite soon, is the ability to specify whitelist/blacklists by regular expression matched against author and/or title in the config file. I'm also planning to add a way to run calibre-sync once without actually downloading the books, but with updating the list of downloaded books - so you could make sure that from that point on, it would ignore all books currently in the library.

If anyone wants new/better functionality, I'd advise them to be loud about it. Right now, the tool works well enough for my own use-case, so unless I know that other people are actually using it and have needs which don't match my own, I'm not very motivated to keep working on it.

[mobamoba]

This looks great! I use Calibre all the time so thanks!

[k_k_kls]

Will it work on kobo aura one?

[mishagale]

Originally Posted by k_k_kls

Will it work on kobo aura one?

I don't have an Aura to test with, but it should work on any Kobo. I'd be pleased to hear how it works on your device, and if it doesn't, maybe I can fix it.

[k_k_kls]

Thank you man for your support!That moves me a lot,I thought you were gone.

I will test after I receive my device.I just place my order,it will take quite a long time to arrive,like half a month......

[mishagale]

Originally Posted by k_k_kls

Thank you man for your support!That moves me a lot,I thought you were gone.

I will test after I receive my device.I just place my order,it will take quite a long time to arrive,like half a month......

Note quite gone, just haven't been working on it for quite a while. It basically works fine for me, so I don't have much motivation to do more development, and the user-base is very small. But if I get bug reports and feature requests, I'll try and address them.

[k_k_kls]

I suppose its user-base will increase a lot if you post this thread on kobo forum.
Your firmware still 3.0.1?

[k_k_kls]

Sorry man，I decide to use autoshelf to manage my books.I think its very difficult to make autoshelf and calibre-sync both work,so I give calibre-sync up.

[mishagale]

Originally Posted by k_k_kls

Sorry man，I decide to use autoshelf to manage my books.I think its very difficult to make autoshelf and calibre-sync both work,so I give calibre-sync up.

I wasn't familiar with Autoshellf before now, but I might be able to do some tweaks to make calibre-sync play nicer with Autoshelf. From a very brief glance, it seems the problems are that a) Autoshelf gets its info from the directory structure, and calibre-sync downloads files to a fixed "Author Name/Title.epub" path, and b) Autoshelf is manually triggered while on the "connected to PC" screen.

A possible workaround for b) would be to set the "delay" value (in the [update] section of the calibre-sync.ini config file) to a higher value, e.g. 10. This would ensure you have ten seconds in which to tap the screen and trigger Autoshelf.

I will (eventually, in my Copious Free Time) investigate whether it is possible to trigger autoshelf automatically when calibre-sync updates. I will also look into ways to make the path c-s saves downloaded books to configurable - do you have any suggestions on how that might work?

for the feedback.

EDIT: It seems Calibre includes fields like tags and series as part of the HTML description (content field in the OPDS), so it should be possible to parse that information, and use it to determine the save path.

[k_k_kls]

I know nothing about programming，the only I can help is to give suggestions......
I think it is enough to sort books by three attributes:tag,author,series.
First,I edit metadata in calibre properly,then calibre-sync downloads file to tag/author/serie,result in kobo like:
Fantasy fiction/George R. R. Martin/a song of ice and fire 5 books
I also have the ice dragon and a knight of seven kingdoms(their series attributes are blank),result like:
Fantasy fiction/George R. R. Martin 2 books

I think that is good.But for some books,which is the only book I owe of the author's,like
Workout/mark lauren 1 book
I have only one book of mark lauren's,so I prefer to put it just in Workout/
I think these two ways to sort can handle mostly conditions.So my design is:

1.Ask users to edit metadata in calibre properly,add a new column.
2.calibre-sync make direction Tag/author/series or Tag/ according to the value of the new column.

Of course u can make it more customizable,but I think my idea is enough.
Don't know if I express myself clearly......

[k_k_kls]

calibre-sync does not work on firmware 4.3.9084.It says "something goes wrong"

I tried to go to a previous version,reset and regist,but kobodesktop update firmware to newest automatically(I can't resist via wifi).

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by k_k_kls

calibre-sync does not work on firmware 4.3.9084.It says "something goes wrong"

I tried to go to a previous version,reset and regist,but kobodesktop update firmware to newest automatically(I can't resist via wifi).

Actually, using the desktop app is the easiest way to get to your desired firmware. After the factory reset, connect and let the desktop app do its stuff. But do not eject the device. Then replace the firmware files in the .kobo directory with the ones for the version you want to use. The eject the device.

[Sonofrobot]

I'm not sure if this is working on the most recent version of Kobo firmware but I'm going to try it on my Forma.
Assuming it does work, how hard would it be to add the ability to sync both ways so that data such as when a book is finished makes it's way back to Calibre?