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

[Jobarr]

So I don't know what to say... the whole process is compliant to what is expected, it just seems that the CC decides to restart and his own...

Thanks for looking into it and for all the background information. This was on a 2019 Shield TV, but it has also happened with JVC and Google devices. I have never seen these behaviors with any other services (at least Google Play Music or YouTube Music) as far as I know. I am surprised that these issues don't seem to be more common with other users. I have had them occasionally at least since I started using LMS around 7 months ago. I just finally got around to posting.

[philippe_44]

Thanks for looking into it and for all the background information. This was on a 2019 Shield TV, but it has also happened with JVC and Google devices. I have never seen these behaviors with any other services (at least Google Play Music or YouTube Music) as far as I know. I am surprised that these issues don't seem to be more common with other users. I have had them occasionally at least since I started using LMS around 7 months ago. I just finally got around to posting.

Other controllers are not affected probably because they are not trying to be bridges and that really complicated the job as fundamentally it’s trying to keep in sync two asynchronous states machines with one boss (LMS) who believes he can be the only boss. Candidly, there a few things that I would change today should I re-write the plugin. For example, a would put more a capabilities in the Perl side. Today, it’s just a config file editor. It could declare a player model and control volume and many other actions / parameters to behave much more accurately.

Still, to your case, can you be super sure that there is no other controller somewhere?

[Jobarr]

Still, to your case, can you be super sure that there is no other controller somewhere?

I know I have the only UI for LMS open and no one else is messing with the cast devices manually or via the Home app or their buttons, etc. I have Node-Red and Home Assistant running on the network, which do look at the devices' states, but neither should ever be playing or pausing, unless they have their own bugs. I just use them to automatically turn on my receiver and adjust its volume when they see the Shield TV is playing, but they aren't supposed to mess with the casting states at all. I am pretty sure I had tried disabling them temporarily at point when troubleshooting but didn't see an improvement. I will have to try that again just to be sure. And this has happened on other speakers that aren't actually monitored there too. I may have seen the play/pause issue only with the Material Skin, so maybe that is another thing to check, I don't know how much skins can influence there. The play/pause thing happens fairly rarely, so it is also hard to catch when troubleshooting.

[pete105]

Hi everyone,

I've gathered a lot of useful information from this forum so far, so thanks. I'm really enjoying the LMS, Squeezelite-X, Castbridge and Spotty combination (running on a Windows 10 PC/server), and I'm so glad I stuck with this over Roon, which I trialled last year.

However, I am having a bit of a a regular issue with Castbridge crashing, which I've tried a number of steps to resolve, unsuccessfully. I'm hoping someone will be able to help, as I've reached a bit of a dead end with troubleshooting myself.

Background:

The issue occurs with all 3 of my Chromecast Audios, along with a group set up containing them. When the issue occurs, Chromecast Audio playback stops and LMS switches to another device. I can restart playback on the same device immediately following this.

In the Castbridge log, I see the following entry on each occasion (I can post a full log file if needed):

Retarting Squeeze2cast after crash: C:\PROGRA~3\SQUEEZ~1\Cache\INSTAL~1\Plugins\CASTBR ~1\Bin\SQUEEZ~1.EXE -Z -I -f C:\ProgramData\Squeezebox\Logs\castbridge.log -d cast=debug -x C:\ProgramData\Squeezebox\prefs\castbridge.xml

Timing of the issue is intermittent. Sometimes it happens regularly throughout a single album but at other times several hours can pass between crashes.

The crashes occur regardless of content (mp3, FLAC, local or streamed/radio content), so I know it's not corrupt audio files.

Troubleshooting steps completed:

- Confirmed no issues with casting via other methods (Spotify app, BBC Sounds etc.) over a long period of time to any CCA/group.
- Reset and reconfigured my 3 Chromecast Audios.
- Removed and re-added Home group containing these devices
- Tested with different devices in the group - the same issue always occurs
- Crash occurs regardless of which device or group is used, so doesn't appear to be hardware related
- Full Wi-Fi strength to all CCAs. Pinged to each CCA to confirm no network drop at the time of the crash. 1/2ms constant response times to each CCA
- Removed and re-added all CCAs to Castbridge
- Removed and re-added Castbridge from my LMS setup
- Audio format to CCA is PCM (Flow). Not tested others as this is mode I need, but I can do if needed.
- Set Remove timeout to -1 for all players
- LMS volume changes - different options tested and currently set to to "ignore all changes"


Thanks for any help offered. If you need any more information, please let me know.

Pete.

[philippe_44]

Most important thing to try would be to confirm crashes in ‘thru’ mode first. Then try ‘flac’ but no flow, then pcm but no flow then flac and flow

[pete105]

Hi Phillipe,

Thanks for the quick reply. I've sent Transcode to None across all players and will confirm the outcome.

Thanks,

Pete.

[pete105]

Most important thing to try would be to confirm crashes in ‘thru’ mode first. Then try ‘flac’ but no flow, then pcm but no flow then flac and flow

A quick update - CastBridge crashed within 15 minutes when set to no transcode, PCM (no flow) and FLAC (no flow). However it has now seems to have stabilised with FLAC (flow), which doesn't make any sense to me, but I can run with it this way for now. Any ideas why?

In terms of sound quality, presumably passing PCM instead of a re-encoded FLAC is the best way to maximise this? I can't tell the difference at this stage, so I'm not sure it's going to be an issue for me either way.

[philippe_44]

A quick update - CastBridge crashed within 15 minutes when set to no transcode, PCM (no flow) and FLAC (no flow). However it has now seems to have stabilised with FLAC (flow), which doesn't make any sense to me, but I can run with it this way for now. Any ideas why?

In terms of sound quality, presumably passing PCM instead of a re-encoded FLAC is the best way to maximise this? I can't tell the difference at this stage, so I'm not sure it's going to be an issue for me either way.

Ok, the no transcode was very important, thanks. In term of sound quality, there will be absolutely zero difference between pcm and flac, I can ensure you.

Could you share with me a typical playlist that causes the crash? Maybe Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, Qobuz?

[freelsjd]

Understood. Can you set "casting debugging" in the "additional debugging" and post the server.Log once it has happened. Will be big, probably

Philippe, apologize for taking so long to respond to your request. I had some time today to do this. I am attaching the log file after I updated the plugin yesterday and restarted. I played something today to produce the hanging plugin, and now sending you the log file.

Then I let it run a little while today, before finally killing the chromecast plugin. We can see that extra information added to the log file which is attached as log2.

[philippe_44]

Philippe, apologize for taking so long to respond to your request. I had some time today to do this. I am attaching the log file after I updated the plugin yesterday and restarted. I played something today to produce the hanging plugin, and now sending you the log file.

Then I let it run a little while today, before finally killing the chromecast plugin. We can see that extra information added to the log file which is attached as log2.

Can you also try to run the static version and see if the same happens? Could you also send me your config file?