Desktop App

[JonHansen]

Hi,

Firstly. Thanks for your work on this. I'm currently trialing Podtrapper and look set to pay up when that trial expires. I don't have a data plan for my 8220 (since i'm a cheapskate) and mostly use Wi-Fi. To get my podcast feeds started and up to date i decided to use the dektop app but can't seem to get it to download anything. I have MMS turned off, have connected the BB via USB and run the App but all i get is:

Connection advice is unavailable
No such interface supported
Device count > 0
GUID: 0CDF7150EDE55A84842146C226B61076592081E0
NetworkType: 3
BBPIN: 2577ef24
MUX Version: 512
OS Type: 0
HubAddress: \DosDevices\HCD3\6
Power: 500
DeviceName: \\?\USB#Vid_0fca&Pid_8004&MI_00#6&23cce618&0&0000#{80375827-83b8-4a51-b39b-905fedd4f118}
Opening Channel: PodtrapperUSB

Nothing else happens on the BB or on the desktop.

What am i missing here? Is there a specific way i need to set things up or a specific order i need to run things in?
Any Chance of a brief into/how to for the desktop app?

Thanks
Jonathan

[marwatk]

Hi Jonathan,

As of now the desktop downloader is only really passable, I plan to improve it (and remove all the debugging and put helpful message in there), but for now it's just a stop gap for those who don't have wifi.

You won't see an improvement in transfer speed or anything going over the desktop app vs. wifi, I'm not sure where the bottleneck is, but it's somewhere inside the blackberry, so the download method doesn't really matter.

But, if you want to use the downloader, you're looking for two lines after each other:

Opening Channel: PodtrapperUSB
Client Connected Successfully

If you don't see either, or only one, that means the Desktop Downloader isn't communicating with your berry properly.
The BB usb apis are a bit kludgy, and sometimes the channel PodTrapper uses gets stuck in an invalid state. Usually disconnecting your blackberry and restarting the desktop downloader will clear it up, but occasionally the BB Device Manager will go totally haywire and a reboot is necessary.

Other than that issue, though, all you really need to do is make sure PodTrapper is running on the device and plug it in.

Definitely let me know if this doesn't help, I'll elaborate further. And I'm definitely planning on improving it, but for now it works, so I had higher priority stuff to finish. But, if it doesn't work for some reason, then I definitely need to address it.

-Marcus

[JonHansen]

Thanks.

I got to the stage you described in your message. I assume from there you use the UI on the B/B to download since i have no apparent UI on my desktop?

How do i download an OPML file?

[marwatk]

What do you mean by download an OPML file? There's rudimentary support for importing them via email attachments (if they are renamed to .xml), but I've heard reports it doesn't work in all cases.

Let me know...

-Marcus

[JonHansen]

OPML is the way i export my RSS feeds (including podcasts) and import them into a new reader. However i socovered that i can load all the feeds into podtrapper as a txt file, so the need for me to have a desktop is no longer. Because of this i haven't tried to use it since. You realy don't need a desktop app since the BB app is so good, even if, like me, you only have Wi-Fi

J

[marwatk]

PodTrapper will allow you to launch xml attachments as OPML for import into podtrapper as well, though OPML doesn't distinguish between podcasts and regular feeds, so make sure you only export your podcasts. Then you can email that file to yourself, choose 'open attachment', and podtrapper should import them.

Let me know if it works if anyone tries it.

-Marcus