Chowmain - Google Chromecast

Chromecast is a thumb-sized media streaming device that plugs into the HDMI port on your TV. Set it up with a simple mobile app, then send your favorite online shows, movies, music and more to your TV using your smartphone, tablet or laptop.

At $35usd MSRP for the Chromecast these devices are cheap and powerful.

The Chowmain Chromecast driver enables us to integrate the Google Chromecast hardware into the Control4 home automation system with seamless control and feedback.

Features

* Auto detection of application launch.
* Auto detection of application mirror
* Auto Room Off when return to home screen.
* Auto Room On when entering an application from the home screen.
* On (app selected), Off (home screen), Play, Pause, Stop, Volume and Mute feedback
* Play, Pause/Stop, Jump Forward 30 seconds, Jump Backward 30 seconds, Jump Forward 5 minutes, Jump Backward 5 Minutes, Volume and Mute control
* Number buttons jump to a percentage of the current media playing.
* Application description feedback
* Media title feedback
* Application description displayed on touchscreens

Usage Scenarios

* Automatically turn the TV on when you cast a video (youtube, Netflix, Plex and more) from your phone or tablet.
* Automatically turn off the TV if you forget (will happen once it returns to the home screen).
* Use the Control4 SR-250 remote control to control your app once you have selected a video to play
* Automatically dim the lights upon video play feedback.
* Automatically ramp the lights upon video pause / stop feedback.
* Mirror Detection turns on your boardroom projector automatically and brings the screen down. (Send powerpoint/webpage/word document/PDF)
* Combine with chowmain event logger to note down what you’ve watched on youtube on the chromecast and other apps that output titles.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should i use this driver when i'm using my phone or tablet anyway?
* The driver auto detects when the chromecast starts an application and switches the room on within Control4. As Control4 knows about it you can easily switch sources out of it. The alternative method is to add a fake driver in Control4 in which can you need to manually switch.

* Playback control on certain applications (YouTube, Plex, Redbull TV and Viki) enables you to utilise the SR-250 remote control whilst watching your movie or tv show. Much more elegant than using your tablet or phone.

Are there any other cool things we can do with these drivers?
* The chromecast is perfect for a boardroom presentations. Cast your desktop to the chromecast using chrome browser and have the projector turn on, screen lower, curtains close and lights turn off. Disconnect off chromecast and the projector turns off, screen raises, curtains open and the lights turn back on. This has been tested on the windows and OSX builds of chrome with success.

See example for more details - http://www.chowmain.co.nz/boardroom


How do I find out more information about the driver?
Please see the links below for more information about the driver.

Chowmain Website

Download Installation Guide


How do I buy the driver?
All of our drivers are distributed solely through extra vegetables. All drivers are sold per project - you only ever need one license per item per project.

Download Suite / Purchase Licence

Who do i contact for technical support?
Extra Vegetables provides technical support through their website. It is recommended that you view their knowledgebase first to see if there is an answer to your problem listed.

Do you provide trial licences?
Our licencing is provided by Extra Vegetables as such their trial licencing system will work with our drivers

Nice.

I like to

Already have it up and running! Pretty cool. Now I want more Chromecasts in my House!

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

Running as well and love it. Have several boardrooms we are going to use this in.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Running as well and love it. Have several boardrooms we are going to use this in.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Glad you're enjoying it.  We are pushing out an update via EV tonight for those of you who use netflix and hulu.  Discovered an issue where it will not detect the apps and won't start up.  FIxed now and auto-update will push it out to all projects.

 

I must say it has changed the way i consumer my media in my home and work.

 

We are rolling this out in 3 of our offices in New Zealand to showcase the commercial and residential applications of the device.

Alan,

 

Any way to know when its auto updated?  It would be nice if i could trigger a push alert on auto update?

Driver version in then properties tab will say 7.0.1

Should be out within a few hours

Also, did you see my other feature suggestion? It was the idea that some TV's take a long time to turn on, so when you are casting a video source that has the pause property, once the driver detects the video, it should pause it for the tv start up time if the TV is turned off.

It's hard to pause the video as by the time the connection connects the tv may or may not be ready. You can however press the 0 button to return to the start on supported apps (YouTube, Plex, Redbull & Viki).

good trick to know thanks!

You can also use the other number buttons to jump to a percentage of the video eg 5 goes to 50%

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/apps.html

 

that is a list of all chromecast enabled apps

Just had confirmation from a user that our driver detects and auto-on/off's if you use android mirroring.

Just had confirmation from a user that our driver detects and auto-on/off's if you use android mirroring.

It does not appear to work on ios. Also since the update it doesn't appear to know what app is being used. Not at home though to confirm right now

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

what doesn't appear to work on iOS?  There is no screen mirroring for iOS?

 

I agree with the problems.  Alan is supposed to a remote session on my system at some point to do some troubleshooting

The Auto On/Off does not appear to be working on ios nor is the driver picking up what app is playing.  I do want to reboot the controller and the chromecast though when I get home to confirm there wasn't a hiccup

Hey guys thanks for the feedback. Just out with my daughter today (it's Saturday in Australia) but will work with Mitch tonight to sort through the issues.

So working with mitch on his system i discovered the problem.  Seems that the EV auto update doesn't start my driver up after the update.  I'll work with EV to make sure that auto update works with the driver from now on however for the moment a reboot of director (or your controller) will fix the issue.

Is licensing a site license (multiple chromecast in same project) or is it a per device license?

thank you

Is licensing a site license (multiple chromecast in same project) or is it a per device license?

thank you

Project. I liked it so much I bought a 2nd today!

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

So working with mitch on his system i discovered the problem.  Seems that the EV auto update doesn't start my driver up after the update.  I'll work with EV to make sure that auto update works with the driver from now on however for the moment a reboot of director (or your controller) will fix the issue.

 

 

yup a reboot did the trick, Thanks for the great driver

All of our drivers are site licences. Buy one licence and use it as many times as you like in the one project.

A new version of the driver will come out in the next two days as version 7.0.2 which resolves issues that some systems are having.

If you install the driver today then please make sure that auto update is enabled so that the driver will update itself to 7.0.2

that's great, thank you very much for clarifying this Alan, i will be purchasing a license in the very near future as I currently have 2 chromecast's and will be adding a third in next couple of weeks.

No problems. I am very excited by this driver. I think that it changes the way we interact with media in the home and in the workplace.