Announce: CastBridge = integrate Chromecast players with LMS (squeeze2cast)

[SamY]

Yes. It's an actual static address.

Okay. Same as mine. And we're both running Windows 10. Hmmm... I wonder what's different? Probably some obscure registry setting.

[philippe_44]

I believe there are ways to control that behavior. Actually, if mine would reboot itself every four nights at around 3 am, it would 'fix' my problem.

The busy hours or whatever they call that has never seemed to do the trick and AFAIK you can only delay updated & reboot by so much. But anyway, I just wanted to mention that some might not see the issue b/c of these nightly reboots

[piert]

Philippe, I 'lost' the chromecast devices again last night (as before, still listed at the bottom on the chromecast plugin page and checked, just not showing up in LMS as selectable players).
You mentioned the other day that it probably had to do with the binary helper.
I see the 'select binary helper' as the second option on the chromecast plugin page in LMS and there are two options to choose from 'squeeze2cast.exe' and 'squeeze2cast-static.exe'.
Also, there are instructions for windows users to install ' Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable'.
Could our issues be related to the settings/configuration of the binary helper?
Would it be possible to have the chromecasts working at all if the binary helper configuration was incorrect (or the Visual C++ redistributable is not installed)? If so, could a wrong configuration setting cause chromecasts to disappear over time?
Where can I read more about this?

[philippe_44]

Philippe, I 'lost' the chromecast devices again last night (as before, still listed at the bottom on the chromecast plugin page and checked, just not showing up in LMS as selectable players).
You mentioned the other day that it probably had to do with the binary helper.
I see the 'select binary helper' as the second option on the chromecast plugin page in LMS and there are two options to choose from 'squeeze2cast.exe' and 'squeeze2cast-static.exe'.
Also, there are instructions for windows users to install ' Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable'.
Could our issues be related to the settings/configuration of the binary helper?
Would it be possible to have the chromecasts working at all if the binary helper configuration was incorrect (or the Visual C++ redistributable is not installed)? If so, could a wrong configuration setting cause chromecasts to disappear over time?
Where can I read more about this?

No, I really don't think so (at all). If only a reboot brings them back, as opposed to simply restarting the plugin and if the log of the plugin does not show them being back, then it is a Windows/network problem

[piert]

No, I really don't think so (at all). If only a reboot brings them back, as opposed to simply restarting the plugin and if the log of the plugin does not show them being back, then it is a Windows/network problem

OK, thanks, then I will have to look elsewhere. Interestingly, my setup has now been working correctly for a number of days. Keeping my fingers crossed!

[edw5]

There is definitely something about my system that impacts the chromecast bridge but not the upnp bridge (or anything else, as far as I can tell), but I'm no longer confident that it started with bridge version 2.2.3. Due to the length of time the bridge takes to fail, it turns out that one of the 1.8.x releases is the last version that I know with confidence worked for me.

I'm trying various bridge versions in an attempt to figure out which version introduced the failure I'm seeing, but it's a time-consuming process.

I have to admit to being mystified. I'm now finding that even 1.82.2, which I had previously been running for months, is failing. However, the upnp bridge runs with no problem whatsoever, in the same container on the same machine.

I've dug a disused raspberry pi out of a cupboard and I'm going to try running the chromecast bridge on that. If you (philippe44) want to send me a chromecast bridge (linux x86_64 static) with more instrumentation to run on the NAS I'd be happy to try it.

[SamY]

My latest encounter with disappearing players adds another twist to the story. After going a full seven days without experiencing the problem, I rebooted my Windows 10 server yesterday afternoon in order to install an OS update. Sometime today, around 24 hours later, my CC players disappeared and again could only be recovered by another reboot. So even though a reboot always works to resolve the problem, doing so doesn't reset the countdown to the next occurrence. This tells me that whatever is happening is probably being triggered by something outside of Windows --- maybe the wifi connection or even the router itself, although I don't believe it has to do with the lease renewal as some have speculated. I will start looking at it from that perspective and hopefully can narrow things down further. Stay tuned.

[edw5]

I moved both the chromecast and upnp bridges onto a raspberry pi, and again the chromecast bridge (version 2.2.6) failed in less than 48 hours while the upnp bridge is still running. That rules out the network stack on the NAS. The raspberry pi has a hardwired connection and I started the bridges directly from an interactive shell (with -z to make them daemons).

[SamY]

I moved both the chromecast and upnp bridges onto a raspberry pi, and again the chromecast bridge (version 2.2.6) failed in less than 48 hours while the upnp bridge is still running. That rules out the network stack on the NAS. The raspberry pi has a hardwired connection and I started the bridges directly from an interactive shell (with -z to make them daemons).

You say that the CC bridge failed. Did it crash, or is this the same problem I have on Windows where the players disappear and cannot be used again until the server is rebooted?

[edw5]

You say that the CC bridge failed. Did it crash, or is this the same problem I have on Windows where the players disappear and cannot be used again until the server is rebooted?

It's not quite either. For me, the bridge continues running, but after a period of time all of its network operations fail, making it effectively useless. It never actually crashes though, and I only have to restart the bridge, not the host machine. Also, all my machines are running Linux. What's really odd, as I've mentioned a few times, is that the upnp bridge continues to run successfully on the exact same machine.

[Paul Webster]

Have you tried switching to the other version of the application? static v non-static

[SamY]

It's not quite either. For me, the bridge continues running, but after a period of time all of its network operations fail, making it effectively useless. It never actually crashes though, and I only have to restart the bridge, not the host machine. Also, all my machines are running Linux. What's really odd, as I've mentioned a few times, is that the upnp bridge continues to run successfully on the exact same machine.

I don't know how odd it is but I've also never experienced a problem like this with the UPNP bridge or with any other Windows app --- LMS plugin or otherwise. I wish my problem only required restarting the bridge instead of rebooting the machine though. I envy you.

[edw5]

Have you tried switching to the other version of the application? static v non-static

On X86_64 I have tried both versions a number of times; on aarch64 (the pi) I haven't tried that yet. The failure I'm seeing typically occurs in 36-48 hours, which is frequently enough to be annoying, but also infrequently enough to make identifying the root cause by changing parts of my setup very time-consuming. I'm currently trying to figure out if I have enough unused equipment to set up an isolated network to experiment on, in case my ISP-issued router is the problem.

[edw5]

The bridge failure is caused by the number of chromecasts that are visible on my network and enabled (or to be accurate, not disabled) in the config file.

I have at least 5 and sometimes 6 chromecasts on my network at all times. I only use the bridge on 2 of these, so I had the others disabled in the config file. About a month ago, I removed the network connections from 2 TV's with chromecast built-in and replaced them with streaming sticks. At almost exactly the same time, I upgraded the bridge. The key point is that I regenerated the bridge config from scratch and did not disable any devices in the config.

This is when my problems started, and nothing I could do, including reverting to 1.82.2, would fix them. The bridge always failed in less than 48 hours, even after I moved it to a different machine.

It finally dawned on me the other day that the config file change was potentially significant. I disabled all but one device in the config and restarted the bridge. More than 72 hours later, it is still running.

The bridge can clearly handle 5 or even 6 devices -- it doesn't fail immediately it detects them all. I suppose it's possible that there's a failure after a set number of add/remove operations, but that also seems unlikely. I haven't looked at the source, but a race condition seems most likely to me -- either between multiple instances of the add/remove code, or between that code and something else.

I hope this helps.

[SteveBamber]

I'm having trouble getting a Nest Mini to work with the new 2.2.x version

A separate Chromecast Audio works great with 2.2.x but the Nest Mini won't play anything, consistently reports a launch error trying to start the new CC app

[08:13:44.846933] SendCastMessage:125 [0x7f4cf002cfd0]: Cast sending: {"type":"CONNECT"}
[08:13:55.874108] SendCastMessage:125 [0x7f4cf002cfd0]: Cast sending: {"type":"LAUNCH","requestId":1,"appId":"46C1A81 9"}
[08:13:55.943777] CastSocketThread:603 [0xb3fc20]: type:LAUNCH_ERROR (id:1)
[08:15:42.008275] SendCastMessage:125 [0x7f4cf002cfd0]: Cast sending: {"type":"LAUNCH","requestId":2,"appId":"46C1A81 9"}
[08:15:42.070500] CastSocketThread:603 [0xb3fc20]: type:LAUNCH_ERROR (id:2)

It's been power cycled many times but doesn't seem to want to play ball

Cast firmware 1.56.348702
LMS 8.4.0
Chromecast bridge 2.2.6

Any ideas why the Nest Mini would object to the new CC app ?

At the moment still having to use 2.1.16 in order to cast to the Nest Mini