cast-web-api

Web API for Google Cast enabled devices, based on the node-castv2 implementation by thibauts.

This API is only intended to be used on your local network not for hosting on the public internet.

Installation

$ npm install cast-web-api -g

You might run into issues with the optional Google-Assistant integration.

First steps

$ cast-web-api start

The server runs on your network IP:3000 by default. On error it defaults to 127.0.0.1. Adjustable via:

$ cast-web-api start -H 192.168.0.11 -p 8080

Usage

$ cast-web-api -h

   USAGE

     cast-web-api <command> [options]

   COMMANDS

     start               Start cast-web-api as daemon           
     stop                Stop the cast-web-api daemon           
     status              Check status of the cast-web-api daemon
     startup             Start the cast-web-api daemon on system startup      
     unstartup           Remove the cast-web-api daemon start on system startup
     fix-perm            Changes permissions on /config to current user
     help <command>      Display help for a specific command    

   GLOBAL OPTIONS

     -h, --help         Display help                                      
     -V, --version      Display version

Basics

cast-web-api tries to behave like the Google Home app. All available devices will be connected to, if a device goes down, it'll be removed. If it randomly disconnects, it'll try to reconnect. The autoConnect behavior can be turned of with the config parameter autoConnect. This can be helpful for large speaker groups.

Parameters

Every changed parameter will be saved in /config/config.json.

Run on system startup

Enable start cast-web-api on startup.

$ cast-web-api startup

Disable start cast-web-api on startup.

$ cast-web-api unstartup

Documentation

Online

Parse the swagger.json, in the online editor.

Local

Install the devDependencies for instance git clone this repo then npm install into the repo. Docs now available at /swagger.

Debugging

Every log output follows this format: {time} {device id} {function name}: {message}. For easy differentiation between those components, device id is inverted in color and function name underlined. Info messages appear in your standard terminal color. Error messages in red, warning messages in red and server related messages in blue.

2018-03-31T18:27:09.508Z a90824f40764eb5df1fccc4f5cb95dd3 reconnectionManagement(): reconnecting

cast-web-js uses npm's debug package. Debugging can be enabled with the following command:

$ DEBUG=cast-web-api node (yourdirectory)/castWebApi.js

If you need further information you can enable debugging for the underlying castv2 module. You can either set the scope to castv2 or to everything:

$ DEBUG=* node (yourdirectory)/castWebApi.js

Further information

thibauts wrote a great protocol description. I can only highly recommend reading it.

If you read the first sentences of this file it goes without saying that you should not run this API on the internet. Run it behind a firewall only in your local network!

If you find a bug or typo, feel free to contact me, open an issue, fork it, open prs, you name it.