Caster

Tools to simplify displaying web pages on your Chromecast.

The actual work of controlling the Chromecast is done by the go-cast tool which needs to be present on the system running the software.

Server

Start the server using node index.js.

Its /cast/CHROMECAST_NAME endpoint will accept a URL in the url query parameter and display that on the Chromecast named CHROMECAST_NAME on your local network. Keep in mind that you need to percent-escape your URLs to not lose their query parameters.

Setup

You will need the go-cast tool on your system and set the path to its executable in the CASTER_GO_CAST_PATH environment variable.

Caster will listen on port 10000. You can adjust that using the CASTER_PORT environment variable.

macOS LaunchAgent

A LaunchAgent for macOS is provided in macOS/net.earthlingsoft.caster.plist.

Place that file in ~/Library LaunchAgents and adjust the environment variables in the file to suit your system.

Then activate the LaunchAgent using launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/net.earthlingsoft.caster.plist.

To remove the LaunchAgent, run launchctl unload -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/net.earthlingsoft.caster.plist and then remove the file.

Example

With the server running on localhost:10000, display the earthlingsoft home page on the Chromecast Wohnzimmer.

curl https://localhost:10000/cast/Wohnzimmer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fearthlingsoft.net

Caster web page

At /caster the server provides a simple web page with a form to enter the name of the Chromecast and the URL to display on it.

Slideshow web page

At /slideshow the server provides a simple web page that displays an iframe with the content of each url query parameter (escaping!) for 30 seconds and cycles through them.

The display duration can be controlled using the seconds parameter.

As many websites don’t allow embedding these days, don’t expect this to work with all pages.

Sending this URL to your Chromecast lets you cycle through the given pages.