What action would you want performed on the Chromecast when you do this? It doesn't support "playlist" functionality. The playlist is on the device that you are using to cast from.
The chrome cast api supports a media queue - is that what you mean by playlist?
Either way it is possible to skip to the next track for sure: Class: RemotePlayerController | Cast | Google Developers
Adding nextTrack() and previousTrack() would also bring the driver one step closer to supporting most of the Music Player capability.
As it stands now, the play() and pause() commands don't really seem to be tied to any capability - having them tied to a capability would make it easier and cleaner to expose them to apps in a meaningful way.
| Attributes | Device | Music Player | Mirrors |
|---|---|---|---|
| level |  * |
|
volume |
| mute | |
|
|
| status | |
|
|
| trackData | |
||
| trackDescription | |
||
| Commands | Device | Music Player | |
| mute | |
|
|
| nextTrack | |
||
| pause | |
|
|
| play | |
|
|
| playText(text) | * |
|
speak() |
| playTrack(trackuri) | |
|
|
| previousTrack() | |
||
| restoreTrack(trackuri) |  |
|
playTrack() |
| resumeTrack(trackuri) | |
|
playTrack() |
| setLevel(volumelevel) | * |
|
setVolume() |
| setTrack(trackuri) | |
|
playTrack() |
| stop() | |
|
|
| unmute() | |
|
* clear direct mappings to existing attributes/commands
could use other commands as a proxy (eg. playTrack())
2 Likes
Just ordered my hubitat. I use tasker and ifttt mainly for my automation using Rf and ir hubs (broadlink) Touched on Home assistant for a while which showed promise but got a corrupt image and had problems connecting to it even after reinstalling and wasted lots of time... So here I am hoping to incorporate hubitat and my first lot of zwave/zigbee
So get to the point I hear you... I'm hoping to detect if a chromecast or a group is playing and then act on that (command one of my broadlink rm pro to change the receiver channel). Is it possible to detect the status of a chromecast in hubitat or is the compatibility more just for casting and controlling a chromecast?
I’m not sure exactly, but my Google Home devices using the inbuilt chromecast app/driver all show a ‘status’ of idle or running whether they are speaking or not.
They also have a ‘mediaSource’ attribute which shows as ‘Hubitat’ when I’m using them with TTS or None when silent
So I would think it would be easy to action on either of these two driver attributes.
Edit.
As I don’t use my GH devices for anything other than tts I can’t advise on what they show when playing music etc.
Andy
1 Like
Oh sounds positive. I only ordered the hubitat today so I'll look into this when it arrives (I'm on Australia so it may be a while).
Hubitat is not a multimedia remote control. I would rather have Hubitat working on Home Automation improvements to the hub rather than making this a universal remote control for your google home speakers. Especially since you are talking about a device you can control from another app on the device in your hand. Have we become that lazy that we don't want to change apps?
1 Like
I couldn't see how to get the status of my chromecast, it just stayed as idle. The status of a chromecast should change when playing google music, YouTube, netflix etc yes? The play button didn't seem to work when I added the multimedia tile.
I was hoping to trigger a few things when something started playing.
Did you try "refreshing" the device while it was playing?
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?
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 
, 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
