Chromecast: "MEDIA_STATUS null" after some weeks

Environment: Raspberry Pi 4 with openHAB 5.0.1

I have a Google Home Mini device that I use for sound playback:

        LautsprecherGoogleMini1Url.sendCommand("https://somehost/somefile.mp3")

This item links to the playuri channel.

Initially this works fine. Then after e.g. 2 months the sound playback stops working, i.e. there is no more sound from the device. With the chromecast binding set to trace level then the log only contains a few “MEDIA_STATUS null” messages:

2025-10-25 21:09:53.921 [DEBUG] [ast.internal.ChromecastStatusUpdater] - MEDIA_STATUS null
2025-10-25 21:10:04.047 [DEBUG] [ast.internal.ChromecastStatusUpdater] - MEDIA_STATUS null

Remarks:

  • there are plenty of log messages when the playback works.
  • everything else continues to work fine (several other bindings are active)

2 important observations:

  1. Via Web UI “Things → Chromecast device → Actions → von Url abspielen” (play from URL) the playback on the device still works. But the playback does not work from my rules.
  2. I do have a second Google Home Mini device. Playback on this second device still works fine also from my rules.

Restarting the openhab service always solves the problem. I had the same problem with openHAB version 4.

Any idea what is going wrong here?

Because I again restarted the openhab service I cannot reproduce the problem right now. But I am sure the problem will occur again in some weeks.

Thanks for your support!