Transmission Manager

Do more with Transmission!

• Add torrents by their web page address
• Automatically download new TV show episodes on a schedule

How-to

Given

• Raspberry Pi with LibreELEC 12 and Docker add-on
  
• Central European Time time zone (use your own time zone instead)

Setup

There are two ways to set things up:

• set up Transmission and Transmission Manager from scratch
• connect Transmission Manager to a running Transmission container

Set up Transmission and Transmission Manager from scratch

SSH to your LibreELEC and execute the following commands:

# Create a Docker network
docker network create transmission-network

# Create these folders
mkdir -p /storage/transmission/config
mkdir -p /storage/transmission/watch
mkdir -p /storage/videos/movies
mkdir -p /storage/transmission-manager/data/db

# Run Transmission
docker run -d \
  --name transmission \
  --hostname transmission \
  --network transmission-network \
  -e PUID=0 \
  -e PGID=0 \
  -e TZ=Europe/Prague \
  -p 9091:9091 \
  -p 51413:51413 \
  -p 51413:51413/udp \
  -v /storage/transmission/config:/config \
  -v /storage/transmission/watch:/watch \
  -v /storage/downloads:/downloads \
  -v /storage/tvshows:/tvshows \
  -v /storage/videos/movies:/movies \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/transmission:latest

# Run Transmission Manager
docker run -d \
  --name transmission-manager \
  --hostname transmission-manager \
  --network transmission-network \
  -e PUID=0 \
  -e PGID=0 \
  -e TZ=Europe/Prague \
  -p 9092:9092 \
  -v /storage/transmission-manager/data:/app/data \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ghcr.io/aannenko/transmission-manager:latest

Connect Transmission Manager to a running Transmission container

SSH to your LibreELEC and execute the following commands:

# Create a Docker network
docker network create transmission-network

# Find the ID of your Transmission container
# (should look similar to 228b4333c2cd)
docker ps

# Add your Transmission container to this network
# (replace 228b4333c2cd with the ID of your Transmission container)
docker network connect transmission-network 228b4333c2cd

# Find the Transmission's IP address within transmission-network
# (replace 228b4333c2cd with the ID of your Transmission container,
# look for the node called "transmission-network" and within it - "IPAddress",
# the IP address should look similar to 172.18.0.2)
docker inspect 228b4333c2cd

# Create a folder for TransmissionManager.db
mkdir -p /storage/transmission-manager/data/db

# Run Transmission Manager
# (replace 172.18.0.2 with the IP address of your Transmission container)
docker run -d \
  --name transmission-manager \
  --hostname transmission-manager \
  --network transmission-network \
  -e PUID=0 \
  -e PGID=0 \
  -e TZ=Europe/Prague \
  -e Transmission__BaseAddress="http://172.18.0.2:9091" \
  -p 9092:9092 \
  -v /storage/transmission-manager/data:/app/data \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ghcr.io/aannenko/transmission-manager:latest

Send requests

Now that you have set up Transmission Manager, try sending HTTP requests to it from PowerShell 7.
Here are some examples (replace <docker_host> with the hostname or IP address of your docker host):

# See the first 10 torrents registered in Transmission Manager (use "take=<larger_number>" to see more torrents)
(iwr http://<docker_host>:9092/api/v1/torrents?take=10 | ConvertFrom-Json).torrents

# Register a new torrent in Transmission Manager, send it to Transmission for download and check for torrent updates every day at 11:00 and 17:00
iwr http://<docker_host>:9092/api/v1/torrents -Method Post -ContentType application/json -Body '{"webPageUri":"https://nnmclub.to/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1712711","downloadDir":"/tvshows","cron":"0 11,17 * * *"}'

# Can't wait for Transmission Manager to refresh your torrent #3 at the scheduled time? Force-refresh it yourself!
iwr http://<docker_host>:9092/api/v1/torrents/3 -Method Post -ContentType application/json

# Force-refresh all torrents which are still known to Transmission
(iwr http://<docker_host>:9092/api/v1/torrents | ConvertFrom-Json).torrents | % { iwr "http://<docker_host>:9092/api/v1/torrents/$($_.id)" -Method Post -ContentType application/json }

# Unregister torrent #5 from Transmission Manager but do not touch it in Transmission
iwr http://<docker_host>:9092/api/v1/torrents/5 -Method Delete

Alternatively, send requests using Visual Studio Code with the REST Client extension installed - open the file TransmissionManager.Api.http in VS Code, change the host address, the request data and start sending requests.

Usage scenarios

You manually download new episodes of a TV show once a week from the same torrent tracker web page.

Let Transmission Manager do this for you - add the address of this web page to Transmission Manager along with a schedule in cron format that says when to check for new episodes and a location to download the new episodes to. Optionally, also add a regex pattern which will make Transmission Manager correctly find magnet links on that web page.