Hello everyone! I would like to part ways with my Google Chromecast. Fortunately, I had an extra Raspberry Pi 4B (4GB version) in my drawer, which I used to install LineageOS. Afterwards, I installed F-Droid and a customized launcher to give it a more AndroidTV-like appearance.
Now, I have a couple of questions:
- What can I use as an alternative to Google’s screencasting?
- Is it advisable to enable SSH with root access on the Raspberry Pi?
Thanks!
There’s no reason to allow root to login to anything via ssh. Add a specific user to the Wheel group and that user can sudo whatever they need to do. Just make sure to disable password authentication and only allow certificates.
Yes, that’s what I meant, but I worded the question incorrectly
To answer the casting question, the Google cast API used to introduce a lot of breaking changes so many 3rd party apps had a lot of instant over the years.
You could build something yourself using Google SDKs or try to update an older framework that might be abandoned. Raspicast looks fairly recent but I think it’s just the android app and it uses a deprecated RPi OS. RaspberryCast hasn’t been updated since 2018.
It looks ripe for the development of you’ve got the time and dev chops, otherwise it’s going to be super hacky and unreliable at best.
If there’s any decent alternative to Google Cast, I’d love to know because I’ve never found one. You can use Kodi to receive links to Youtube videos and play them, and spotify hast their own built-in casting, but for everything else I’ve got nothing.
I’m currently working hard on something to fill this void! I’ve made HomeHook v2 as a web app and HomeCast as an mpv interface installed on my HTPC and some Pis I have around the house!
I still need to document the installation procedure but if you’re interested in playing stuff from Jellyfin and YouTube, feel free to send me a message and I’ll see if I can help out!
Miracast. Wi-Fi Alliance standard.
It’s not exactly what you’re looking for, and won’t be as seamless, but you might be able to leverage scrcpy.
It uses adb (you may need a fullfat distro for this - lineage may not support it), and allows you to view and control your Android device from a computer. It can also handle audio, and can be used wirelessly. The one caveat is protected content will probably not show up in the mirror - e.g. if you cast your screen and try to stream Netflix, it will likely be unable to send the Netflix video over. The last time I tested, it depended on the specific app, and which APIs they used under the hood (at the time, YouTube worked, Netflix did not).
Can you not disable or spoof the protected content flag. I think i saw a Xposed module for that.
I’m using macast and jellyfin-mpv-shim. I can send almost anything to my PC from my phone and have it played in full screen.
Do you specificly want to cast your screen? Or do you want to cast things like YouTube videos and music?
