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

[bpa]

@Philippe_44

Yep, just like I feared. I connected via TuneIn, which then promptly cut off the LMS connection (which is OK) but despite closing the connection from TuneIn, I now can't get the CCA to play via LMS anymore. It keeps scanning, but never finds the CCA anymore.

Oh well, it's still early days after all...

If you're using the Android Tune-in app to cast - I found it's not very reliable at releasing CCA when finished to any other app. Have you checked status with Android Chromcast App and if necessary to "stop casting" or similarly use Chromecast Extension on Chrome browser.

[CommanderROR]

I usually check in the Chromecast app. TuneIn isn't great about releasing CCA, but Chromecast app shows that it was released. I'll try it again with Google Play Music. That shoudl work fine.

[bpa]

I usually check in the Chromecast app. TuneIn isn't great about releasing CCA, but Chromecast app shows that it was released. I'll try it again with Google Play Music. That shoudl work fine.

If you install and use the Chromecast Beta Extension into Chrome there is a developer logging window under Options which logs all the "events" from the CCA perspective so it shows what activity is happening. It has a lot of info. I'm not sure if Philippe has any experience of it but it might have info to help.

[CommanderROR]

I'll see if I can aquire some useful info there somehow.

[CommanderROR]

Hey, that Plugin is actually great. So, what I can say so far is, that my TuneIn (beta) correctly starts and stops the session

I think the problem with the LMS bridge is, that there is no way to send the neccessary "connect request". You'd either end up killing the connection if CCA is currently being used to play stuff from apps or Chrome, our you'll end up not being able to connect to CCA...

I just tried a restart of the LMS Cast plugin, and that did the trick, this time at least. This is actually a complication I had not considered...

Idea: Would it be possible to send a custom command to CCA when Play/Pause is pressed or (even better) when Player ist "powered on" in LMS Interface to actively connect/disconnect to CCA? Stopping and restarting the Plugin seems to work reasonably well as far as I can tell...

[philippe_44]

Hey, that Plugin is actually great. So, what I can say so far is, that my TuneIn (beta) correctly starts and stops the session

I think the problem with the LMS bridge is, that there is no way to send the neccessary "connect request". You'd either end up killing the connection if CCA is currently being used to play stuff from apps or Chrome, our you'll end up not being able to connect to CCA...

I just tried a restart of the LMS Cast plugin, and that did the trick, this time at least. This is actually a complication I had not considered...

Idea: Would it be possible to send a custom command to CCA when Play/Pause is pressed or (even better) when Player ist "powered on" in LMS Interface to actively connect/disconnect to CCA? Stopping and restarting the Plugin seems to work reasonably well as far as I can tell...

When you power on/off the device in LMS, this is what it does: connect and disconnect the session

[CommanderROR]

Hmm...have you checked that with the Chrome Extebsion? Because I did not see that happen when I tried it. I'll check and see if I can reproduce the behaviour...

UPDATE: Ah yes, there's the problem...I can only "power on or off" a Player if LMS can actually see it. Since CCA isn't even discovered that's not an option...hmmm...I need to sleep now, my brain is getting even slower than usual...

[philippe_44]

Hmm...have you checked that with the Chrome Extebsion? Because I did not see that happen when I tried it. I'll check and see if I can reproduce the behaviour...

UPDATE: Ah yes, there's the problem...I can only "power on or off" a Player if LMS can actually see it. Since CCA isn't even discovered that's not an option...hmmm...I need to sleep now, my brain is getting even slower than usual...

I think I got it now. I've changed the connection "model". Now, when powered on, the SSL connection is established and will be kept as long as power is on. Everytime LMS starts to play, the Chromecast receiver app is launched (if not already running), connection is established and will be kept as long as another controller does not stop it (this will also gracefully stop any currently playing app).

A bit more painful handling but hopefully that should provide a better coexistence.

I've also added metadata, except for image that seem to crash both Chromecast devices I have

[edit]: discovery can take a while if it does not work first time - a scan is made every 30s - but ultimately, the player must appear in LMS, unless you have disable recurring scan

[CommanderROR]

It does not seem to work for me right now, but let's wait and see how others fare with it.

I think your Plugin is fine so far, if the main use is Squeezebox replacement, because once the CCA have been discovered it works just fine. Switching between Cast mode and LMS Player mode seems to be a problem, at least in my environment.
Sadly the logs don't show any fails, so it's hard to see what's wrong. It just appears, that the "discovery scan" is not discovering any of my CCA devices at the moment...

[philippe_44]

Did you use Dev-4 ? It has corrected most of these issues

[kidstypike]

It does not seem to work for me right now, but let's wait and see how others fare with it.

I think your Plugin is fine so far, if the main use is Squeezebox replacement, because once the CCA have been discovered it works just fine. Switching between Cast mode and LMS Player mode seems to be a problem, at least in my environment.
Sadly the logs don't show any fails, so it's hard to see what's wrong. It just appears, that the "discovery scan" is not discovering any of my CCA devices at the moment...

Last night with my CCA connected to my raspi LMS, I stopped the playlist, after a while the raspi goes to sleep, and the attached USB drive turns off. I left the CCA powered up.

I shut down my PC also running LMS, but no players connected, I only use this LMS for testing new stuff.

This morning I started my PC, and LMS automatically starts.

I opened the webgui for my raspi LMS, the player dropdown box top right showed that my CCA was now connected to my PC LMS. I can usually pull a player from one instance of LMS to another, but I couldn't pull the CCA. I had to stop the PC LMS, and restart the raspi LMS a couple of times before the CCA showed up in the player list.

It's playing now as yesterday, with no problems.

[CommanderROR]

@philippe_44

Sadly yes, updated to dev4 this morning, now it won't find my CCA devices at all. I'm sure I could get it working by doing a few start stop reboot loops, but it's clearly not working as intended for me... 😥

But let's wait and see what other users report.

[bpa]

It just appears, that the "discovery scan" is not discovering any of my CCA devices at the moment...

I never investigated the uPNP discovery method on CCA but the CCA's use of mDNS (the alternate discovery method) means the CCA announces itself on mDNS and then a few minutes later removes itself from mDNS for about a minute and then announces itself again and so on.

edit:

I'll try to do some testing of the CastBridge on my CC's later today when I have time.

[CommanderROR]

Thanks!

[philippe_44]

@philippe_44

Sadly yes, updated to dev4 this morning, now it won't find my CCA devices at all. I'm sure I could get it working by doing a few start stop reboot loops, but it's clearly not working as intended for me... [emoji26]

But let's wait and see what other users report.

Can you post the log of a failed discovery ?