chromecast-mqtt-monitor

Monitors one or more Chromecasts and publishes activity to MQTT, also allows for play/pause/stop/volume control

Breaking Changes

v3+ is a complete rewrite due to the underlying castv2-device-monitor library being unreliable on Raspbian. It now uses castv2-client and mdns directly, based on the work from homebridge-automation-chromecast.

v2+ now uses mqtt-usvc, thus the way in which config is handled has changed.

Configuration

Example config file:

mqtt:
  uri: "mqtt://localhost"
  prefix: "chromecast"
service:
  devices:
    - id: "living-room"
      name: "Living Room Chromecast"
    - id: "study"
      name: "Study Chromecast"

The device id is included in the MQTT topic path. The device name is used to discover the Chromecast on the local network.

You need to specify which Chromecast devices to monitor (by name). It won't automatically monitor them for you.

Launching

It is intended this be installed globally and then run with a config file provided, eg:

npm i -g chromecast-mqtt-monitor
CONFIG_FILE=/path/to/config.yml chromecast-mqtt-monitor

If launching with systemd or similar make sure the config file env var is included.

If running on Raspbian you will need:

sudo apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev

MQTT Events Emitted

All events are emitted under {mqtt.prefix}/status, for example chromecast/status.

Emits playerState, casting, application, volume, volumeLevel, volumeMuted, media, repeatMode.

Breaking v3+: volume is now an object, volumeLevel and volumeMuted. powerState does not exist anymore, but other new events such as casting were added. playState is now playerState. Names are now more inline with the field names in the castv2 client itself.

Eg: chromecast/status/playState

Payload contains JSON stringified data, although most events are primitives.

MQTT Events Handled (Inbound)

All inbound events are received under {mqtt.prefix}/set, for example chromecast/set.

Handles pause, play, stop, volume, volup, voldown.

Only volume accepts a payload, being a number between 0 and 1, where 1 is 100% volume.

volup and voldown adjust the volume by 5% at a time.