I’m trying to do some work on the Chromecast binding, primarily to get it more stable, but also to weed out other bugs I come across.
There are so many things to pursue there, that I feel like a headless chicken at times. So, I need to try to focus my effort, or I’m afraid I’ll never get anywhere.
I’m writing this topic because I want to get an idea of what most people use it for. I’ve understood that many use the binding, I keep seeing it in thread dumps, and when I suggest that people disable it because it’s unstable, they are hesitant and reply that they rely on it for their larger setup.
At the same time, when looking at what it offers, it’s quite limited. You can retrieve various data from the Chromecast, but when I test it, most channels are UNDEF, so it’s hard to see that you get a lot of value from the data you can retrieve. It doesn’t even properly update the playback location during playback (seconds).
When it comes to the actions, it’s also quite limited. You can play a URL, which will work if the Chromecast likes the source format. But, there are more practical ways to do that than via OH.
Apart from that, it’s the audio sink. I’m wondering if this is what most people use..? It does have some limitations though, I’ve looked at it, and if you send an audio file to the sink, it will abort whatever the Chromecast is currently doing, start the default media player, and play the audio file. It won’t resume what the Chromecast was already doing before that, so it’s quite disruptive in you want to use the device for watching videos.
This makes me wonder: Exactly what is it used for? Are people using it to control audio-only devices as a way for OH to output sound into the home? Or, what is it?
Any input is appreciated, I guess nobody knows how “everybody else use it”, I just need to get some examples of what people use it for, to know what to focus on.
But I don’t really do anything with it.