# Calibre Users - Download Wirelessly to Your Kindle (& other devices)



## Meemo (Oct 27, 2008)

Some of you Calibre users may be aware of this, but I've discovered a wonderful feature in Calibre that works on the K3 (requires a bit of tweaking on the K1/K2/DX) and will hopefully work on the Fire. It also works on the iPad/iPhone/Touch and it works on Android tablets and phones. Wireless downloads from Calibre! 

I first discovered it when investigating Aldiko, a terrific reading app for Android for ePubs that's available in the Amazon Android Appstore - hopefully it will work on the Fire. One of the cool features about it is that you can download wirelessly from Calibre to Aldiko. I'd figured out how to do that and was loving it - it actually shows your Calibre library as a "Catalog" within the app and you can connect to it wirelessly and download books.

Today I noticed in the FAQ of Calibre that you can also do it on the iPad/iPhone/Touch and then open the book in the ePub app of your choice (my choices on my iPad were iBooks or Bluefire Reader). You don't get the "Catalog" within the app like you do with Aldiko, but you can access your Calibre library via Safari, then bookmark the address so you can easily get back to it. And if you have picked up .mobi books from other sources (like Feedbooks or Gutenberg or others) and have them in Calibre, you can do the same thing and the Kindle app will open them.

And I just tried it on my K3, and sure enough, I was able to access my Calibre Library through the K3's browser - according to the Calibre FAQ it won't work with the K1/K2/DX without a tweak within Calibre, which they walk you through - but my K3 accessed my Calibre library and and I downloaded a .mobi book. And now the Calibre library is bookmarked in my K3's browser. 

One caveat, you do have to have Calibre open to be able to access your books wirelessly - but theoretically you can access from anywhere as long as it is open. I haven't tried it other than from here at home, but I'll check it out tomorrow.

Directions are here: http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#over-the-air

jmiked had posted about this for the iPad last December: http://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=46192.0


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Good tip, Meemo!  I've read about this but haven't tried it...will have to play with it a bit...

Betsy


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Wow! Fantastic! I use Calibre a lot but I'd missed this along the way. This could revolutionise the way I use Calibre. Many thanks, Meemo.

You may have to play with the firewall on your PC to get it to connect, but it is pretty straightforward - at least when you are at home on your own wifi.

Be aware, though, that although you can theoretically use this when you're out and about (ie using 3G or somebody else's wifi), it will be a lot more complicated to set up than at home.

This is because - assuming you have a modern wireless router - you have a private network inside your house (the 192.168 addresses) and these will only work when you are in your house. If you are in the outside world, your 192.168 address will not be visible.

There are ways of doing it; you need to know the WAN address of your router (which may change regularly unless you pay your ISP for a static IP address); you then need to set up port forwarding on your router and forward the external port to the calibre port on your PC (which you'd want to change from 8080), and then you'll need to connect to your WAN address on the port you've defined. You'll probably have a lot more firewall exclusions to set as well.

Above all, you have to understand that you paid good money for your router to make sure there is a wall between you and all those nasty people in the outside world. If you do this you are opening a little hole in that wall, and all those nasty people will come and try to get through!


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## Meemo (Oct 27, 2008)

Thanks for the additional info Morf.  I'm not that smart about how wifi works, and I guess that's why it didn't work for me when I tried it away from home, it just times out because "the server stopped responding".  And there's been a time or two that I couldn't connect even here at home - probably the signal was a bit low because the computer was doing a time machine backup or something.  But it's still nice to be able to download books here at home wirelessly - heaven forbid I have to get up and go pull that USB cord out of the desk drawer!


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Meemo said:


> ...heaven forbid I have to get up and go pull that USB cord out of the desk drawer!


If only somebody could design wireless power, we wouldn't even need it to charge the battery!


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## druggist (Oct 24, 2011)

Sorry, not quite so expert on such matters. I typed in the correct address as outlined with :8080 at the end and my Kindle Keyboard 3G replied "Your Kindle is unable to load the required page"
What am I doing wrong?


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

druggist said:


> Sorry, not quite so expert on such matters. I typed in the correct address as outlined with :8080 at the end and my Kindle Keyboard 3G replied "Your Kindle is unable to load the required page"
> What am I doing wrong?


I was able to get it to work with my K4-Mini....though a couple times the Mini has hung up.

Be sure to have Calibre open, and be sure to set up the preferences in Calibre as discussed in the link below. And make sure after you've set up the preferences that you close the preferences window to get back to the main Calibre screen. That was the mistake I made at first.

Betsy


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

druggist said:


> Sorry, not quite so expert on such matters. I typed in the correct address as outlined with :8080 at the end and my Kindle Keyboard 3G replied "Your Kindle is unable to load the required page"
> What am I doing wrong?


Try Betsy's suggestions, then try the following:

Firstly, you can check the Calibre side of things from your PC that's running Calibre. Open your browser and in the address type:

*http://localhost:8080*

You should see the Calibre web page. If you don't, look more closely at the Calibre setup. You may also have to check your firewall is allowing the connection (you should get a popup when you start the server saying "Calibre want's to connect to the internet" or similar, you need to allow it.

If you get connected from your PC browser, then on your PC, open a command prompt (Start...Accessories...Command Prompt) and type *ipconfig*. Look for a line that says:

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.101

This is the address you need. Now, on your Kindle, start WiFi and browse to:

*http://192.168.1.101:8080* - substituting the address you found above of course.

This will only work when the Kindle and your PC are both connected to your home network, and your Kindle is using WiFi. It can be made to work from outside but that's a lot of setup needed.


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## Snorkledorf (Oct 18, 2009)

I'm using calibre but could never figure out the web sharing stuff. Now I do essentially the same thing by storing my calibre library folder in my Dropbox and using the Kindle's browser to download my books from that. I do have to manually wade through the directory structure which can be slow with the Kindle's browser, but it is functional.

Here's the page that got me running:
http://dearauthor.com/ebooks/dear-jane-ebooks/using-dropbox-with-your-kindle-device


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