pimatic-chromecast

Access your Google Cast devices in pimatic

Features

• Discover Google Cast compatible devices in your network
• Retrieve media status from Chromecast (playstate, volume, artist, title)
• Control media (play, pause, stop, skip, previous)
• Control volume using rules
• Cast video/audio using rules

Requirements

This plugins uses multicast DNS service discovery using the mdns library, which has the following requirement:
On Linux and other systems using the avahi daemon the avahi dns_sd compat library and its header files are required. On debianesque systems the package name is libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev, on fedoraesque systems the package is avahi-compat-libdns_sd-devel. On other platforms Apple’s mDNSResponder is recommended. Care should be taken not to install more than one mDNS stack on a system.

On Windows you are going to need Apples “Bonjour SDK for Windows”. You can download it either from Apple (registration required) or various unofficial sources. Take your pick. After installing the SDK restart your computer and make sure the BONJOUR_SDK_HOME environment variable is set. You’ll also need a compiler. Microsoft Visual Studio Express will do. On Windows node >=0.7.9 is required.

If you have any issues let me know at https://github.com/FrostedKiwi/pimatic-chromecast/issues

@FrostedKiwi nice work, thank you!
I just installed and will give it a spin

I’ve just published 0.9.3 which fixed an issue where only one chromecast device would be active at a time.

Really looking forward to send audio (doorbell) to my Google Home devices. Would be really nice.

Would it be possible to extend the plugin in that way to make TTS available over cast compatible devices?

I’ve published v1.0.0 which contains support for casting media. It is now possible to cast files like mp4, mp3, jpg as long as those files are publicly accessible.

@OrTiN The library I’m using does not have any support for TTS, so it would have to be some kind of workaround by generating an mp3 from text, uploading it to a public place and then casting that file. I don’t have the time to develop such a thing right now, but maybe sometime

Hi, thx for the update.

Here a small snippet which created given text in speech

	text	= process.argv[2];
	format	= 'mp3'
	lang	= 'de'
	saveTTS	= "/home/user/bla/blupp/tts"

	var gtts = require('node-gtts')(lang);
	var path = require('path');

	var filepath = path.join(saveTTS, text + '.' + format);
	gtts.save(filepath, text, function() {
	})

@ortin Okay you’ve triggered something in me and I found the right way to do this . I’ll release an update soon

@ortin v1.1.1 (or v1.1.0) is released which adds support for casting TTS messages. Usage:

cast {{ text }} in language {{ language }} to {{ device }}

Hi, first of all, cheers for your work, love it so far.
I only have one issue: The Device in Pimatic is not updated when the connection is stopped.
For example: I play something on my smartphone and connect it with my Chromecast, everything is updated in Pimatic and fine.
Then i decide to listen on my phone again, stop the streaming to Chromecast but the states stay the same as it was when playing on Chromecast.
Artist, song name stay the same, state stays on “play” although the Chromecast is not playing for minutes.

Is there anything that can be done as i would love to implement just this in a rule. Would be lovely if the plugin checks once in a minute or so if the state is still appropriate.
Many thanks again!

@suchalaugh that’s actually already supposed to happen. The plugin keeps a session with the Chromecast so it receives all the updates on play state or when the casting stops.
Which device/app are you using? I’ve tested it on a Nest Hub, Nest Hub Max, Google Home (Mini and OG) and Chromecast Audio.

Thanks for your really fast reply

Device is a chromecast audio
Plugin v 1.1.1
nodejs v10.19.0
Pimatic 0.9.54 running on a rock64 (Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.190-1233-rockchip-ayufan-gd3f1be0ed310 aarch64)

Aside form that, text to speech isn’t working for me, just to let you know, which isn’t much of a deal as i don’t need it

Just disabled the ufw completly to check if it is a port problem, doesn’t seem so

@suchalaugh Do you see any connection log messages?

Inside the pimatic-frontend log messages? Nothing at all

info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to cctest
16:17:01 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to Wohnzimmer
16:15:24 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to cctest
16:15:24 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to Wohnzimmer
14:54:45 error [pimatic-chromecast]: Please fill in a hostname and port for the http server in your Pimatic config
14:54:37 error [pimatic-chromecast]: Please fill in a hostname and port for the http server in your Pimatic config
14:18:11 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to cctest
14:18:11 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to Wohnzimmer
14:15:39 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to cctest
14:15:39 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to Wohnzimmer
14:13:50 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to cctest
14:13:50 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to Wohnzimmer
14:12:00 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to cctest
14:12:00 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to Wohnzimmer
13:51:19 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to cctest
13:49:44 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to Wohnzimmer
13:47:17 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to Wohnzimmer
2020-04-02 02:11:59 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to Chromecast Zimmer
02:11:59 info [pimatic-chromecast]: Connected to Wohnzimmer

Errors come from when I reinstalled the plugin i guess

@suchalaugh
https://youtu.be/yxUccovnYps
Made this one more than an hour ago, variables still show the same since

@suchalaugh I’ll see if I can add some more debugging tools to the plugin to find out what the problem is

Cheers mate, appreciate it

Really cool plugin, especially with the possibility to cast text to the Chromecast devices. I ran there in a problem with my network setup. My pimatic installation is proxied through a fritz box with port forwarding. Therefore I am not able to define a “hostname” property in my config. If I do, then pimatic will try to bind to this address and fail. Therefore I would like to have a setting property in the plugin config to define the hostname and port that the TTS interface can use. Using the global settings is of course the best way in most setups, but not with mine.
I worked around the problem my hard coding my desired values in the chromecast.coffee source file.

Thanks for integrating this feature request or guiding me to a better way!

@frostedkiwi
Interestingly enough, i tested it with a chromecast Hdmi-Stick 1. Gen and the plugin works as it should. Just to let you know. I will try to get my hands on a second CC audio to go into further testing.

Nope, got a second CC-Audio ans it has the same issue. Doesn’t update when nothing is playing anymore. Still works fine with the hdmi stick…