Chromecast integration, Thanks HE Team!

I think so... Because I usually do that. Let me check it more thoroughly over the weekend. I just wanted to check to see if this behaviour was normal but seems like it's not.

I don't want to control the CC i want to have a quick glance of who / what song is playing.. without having to pull my phone out, the dashboard is on the tv above my desk.. your use cases may not apply, but im guessing many other peoples do..

3 Likes

And I'm saying that is not what Hubitat was designed for. And not what I think the developers should devote their time to. Your entitled to want the feature and I'm entitled to think it's a waste of time. That's the great thing about opinions. EVERYONE is allowed to have them.

1 Like

This is working for me with my Sonos. The music player template displayed the current metadata. In this case it's the track, artist and album. So it seems that functionality could be included. Have you filed a Feature Request?

16%20PM

Yeah, right. Nonsense. You have Cast-Web-API running for these same and other reasons, so there's no reason to talk that way to another member who is just asking about a feature he wants that you've found another (complex) way to get.

I second the desire to have this feature (and I too use Cast-web, BTW) eventually. So count me as another vote FOR "this is what Hubitat is designed for and what developers should spend time working on" The fact that it is a standard feature of the sonos and cast-web devices is evidence enough that it is an implementable feature here as well and would be a natural fit. No need to pretend to be the arbiter of what definitively is and is not worth someone's time or "what a device is for." The device is for what we bought it for. Enjoy your opinions, though.

3 Likes

Currently, this isn't a feature of the native CC support in Hubitat. but Cast-web, which was originally developed for SmartThings, and has been ported over to Hubitat works well enough to get it on your dashboards.

The native CC support beware: non-strictly technical terms ahead isn't implemented as a music player device type, so instead of following that template and passing every possible attribute and control through, it is basically just a custom multi-variable device type which contains a subset of them. In short, it's a bit stripped down, and if it were implemented as a music player currently, too many of the features wouldn't work, and it would be confusing.
(People would be clicking the skip track button and posting questions about why doesn't it work, etc.)

Cast-Web is a pretty neat API/app/device that brings a lot of the features you're looking for, if you're not familiar with it.
Cast-web can be found here, on Hubitat, and it's a bit of a rabbit hole (you have to have a separate server, for which many people use a raspberry pi or an old PC. I use a container running on a QNAP NAS I already had). But if you decide to give it a try, there are quite a few of us using it, and we should be able to help you out.

Like you, I have dashboards in rooms that I like to have music status, playback controls, volume controls, etc. integrated into. FOR ME...the point of home automation is to tie in the things I want my house to do, and control it all seamlessly from the most convenient places in my house, and for me that includes full featured dashboards. I'm glad I don't leave it up to someone else to tell me what my home automation system is for.

I'm running Sharptools as my dashboards because I'm a tinkerer for fun and a designer for work, but I also maintain built-in Hubitat dashes for quick pocket control.

Here's a small thread about getting these features where I wanted them, which just led to me continuing with the use of my already-running cast-web from ST days. As you can see, there is active discussion about getting these features going, and it's come up as a topic a few times before.

Hopefully any of that is helpful to at least get up to speed with the state of things. If we're not attempting to help each other figure out what makes our experience better, what are we doing here, right?

3 Likes

I recently started mucking about with Docker. What container are you using for this?

Docker inside container station, yep. I'm actually fairly certain I started with a ready-made one, but have updated it some over time. I know there are a few of them out there. Mine is not current-current...I believe cast-web is up to 1.2, but I didn't upgrade, because I don't really use the features that changed with that upgrade, and I'm not positive it plays nicely with HE?

These seem to be the most popular containers on docker hub. Do you remember which one you started with and if it was one of these?

Unfortunately my QNAP is one generation too old and doesn't support Container Station :disappointed:, but hopefully it shows you the name of the containers you have installed.

Unfortunately, it only shows what I've named them. And I'm starting to remember now that though I did play around with some ready-made ones (and yes those look familiar), I ended up just starting from a node.js container so I could make sure that was perfectly up to date, and then just ran the install script for cast-web.
I could export my container, but no guarantees it is up to date (it's definitely not the latest) for what you want to use it for.

1 Like

I appreciate the offer, but don't bother. It should be a good learning experience to set it up myself. It's what I love about Docker. I can't break anything on my linux box....just delete the container and start over.

1 Like

All of those are going to be out of date unfortunately. There been some vast improvements in the latest version. It now holds it's own instance of PM2 so it's much easier to install and maintain.

If you start with a container that already has a version of node 8, you can save yourself a little time right there. After that it should be relatively easy to add the cast-web-api-cli package. The normal install instructions can be found here.

The necessary changes to the two drivers and service manager app can be found on github also. These are the ones I've been using for a while and they work very well.

Part of the reason that Cast-Web doesn't suffer from the same disconnect problems as other solutions, namely the native beta integration, is that there is a built in refresh that runs on the server every 5 minutes. It is extremely lightweight (I've noticed no network of hub performance issues) but it is just enough to keep the connection between the server and the GH device "alive" so that your TTS or MP3s play instantly with no queue issues.

2 Likes

Hey, @Ryan780 , thanks for these updated drivers and such...

I was just updating mine and figured I'd install these, and I noticed that the app wouldn't install.

It said unexpected token at line 24 "}"

It had a close brace, but no open brace. I'm no coder, but I compared to the original app code, and noticed the close brace, so I added one, then the issue becamee the lack of a ")" close parenthesis, so I added that, then it became "iconURL, iconX2URL, iconX3URL can't be blank," so I just took out my close braces and close parenthesis and C&P all of this from the original into the definition before the close brace:

iconUrl: "https://github.com/vervallsweg/smartthings/raw/master/icn/ic_cast_grey_24dp.png",
    iconX2Url: "https://github.com/vervallsweg/smartthings/raw/master/icn/ic_cast_grey_24dp.png",
    iconX3Url: "https://github.com/vervallsweg/smartthings/raw/master/icn/ic_cast_grey_24dp.png") {

And it worked.

Now, of course I'm not telling you this hackery should be done, and I'm sure it's not ideal...but just letting you know there was an issue with the app code that wouldn't allow it to be installed. Just a H-U. :blush::+1:

I will double check...obviously I had to copy/paste out of hubitat. I might have inadvertently missed something. Would be a lot easier to test if Hubitat had a native Github integration. Maybe some day.

Update: Ah...i see, I was taking out all the stuff that contained the SmartThings logos from the ST integration of the app. Didn't want to have any copyright infringement if I uploaded it under my name. :slight_smile: I will have to replace those with something else as I didn't know they were required. Will have to update later but for now I'll but the ST icons back. It all updated in Github now so you should be all set.

1 Like

The iconUrl fields are not used and can/should be empty strings in Hubitat.

iconUrl: "",
iconX2Url: "",
1 Like

That's why I thought they weren't required. Why bother having them if they should be empty? Seems a little silly.

1 Like

This is a setting on the device, you can edit through google home app under device settings I believe

Hi at all. Actually I'm using this integration on my Philips TV with Android TV but there are few command for using it to control the TV. Is it possible to add some more command like on and off the TV? And if possible the direction buttons as well. Thanks

1 Like

i am using the chromecast integration to cast a photo from an url using playTrack; this initially works fine, but after some minutes (seems a bit random how long) the cast stops and chromecast starts showing its standard pictures instead; any idea how to make the casting from playTrack continue?