Chromecast Audio as endpoint? [Delivered; B333]

Press coverage came from dinner with the Roon team at CES :~)

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This would be a brilliant option, espcially if Chromecast enabled endpoints could be grouped with RAAT endpoints…

Better still if you guys could rustle up some £50 RAAT devices to enable any amp/speaker that would be great - i’ll take 10 when you have them ready, Don’t worry i am patient, I can wait till Friday.

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Added a Chromecast Audio to my setup today.

What can I say, other than for £30 I’m amazed!

It was bought for the sole purpose of getting internet radio into my main Devialet system, without spending much dosh. I was a bit skeptical of it only as its Google, and they do good search but I always find their UI etc horrible. Plus by all accounts they’re allegedly a tax dodging corporation who’d sell your personal data soon as look at you. Also, I’m an Apple household (not that they’re much better these days).

Ignoring all that, it’s still amazing! What a genius little device. Setup was simple, clever and a breeze, and I had TuneIn casting via iPad into Devialet optical input with about 3 minutes, including downloading the apps.

I hope Roon support it, for quick easy multi room where you don’t much care about things like high sample rates and clock ownership, I can’t think of a cheaper, simpler way to do it. I’m probably going to get a couple more for the bedroom and kitchen, whereas previously I was thinking along the lines of cubox/Pi which now seem overkill.

Haven’t really compared it to anything else, but it certainly doesn’t sound bad. And I’ve even got a linear USB supply to try with it.

Slightly missing Room Correction but doesn’t matter too much.

I can see the future with a single controller like Roon, with radio, Room Correction, and multi-room to everything. For now, this does the job.

So, just thinking about this - can the Chromecast be used to stream on an internal network? It just occurred to me that it’s geared up for being told to get something from an Internet URL?

Think of Chromecast as more like the iPhone than an AirPlay device. When you cast to it, it downloads a little app on the fly (implemented using web technologies like HTML/JS) and then runs it on the Chrome engine in the device. It’s basically showing you a web page on the TV (or running a headless version of Chrome with no display on audio-only cast devices, but using the same web app).

Netflix’s app embeds a video player and points it at their servers to grab the movie you’re watching. Our app would start audio streaming and fetch data from a machine on your LAN.

There are plenty of apps out there today that grab data over the local network. We use Videostream in our house to drive the TVs–it plays .mkv/.avi off of the NAS.

Roon’s app could work the same way.

The big question about ChromeCast (for me) is: can we do zone synchronization with RAAT? And that I don’t know the answer to yet. It’s going to be a complex set of technical/effort tradeoffs once we get into the work.

Is this a prerequisite to supporting CC, or just nice-to-have?

Nice to have.

Basic support from Chromecast would be acceptable to a LOT of us, I’m sure. We should all weigh in here so Brian can calibrate customer interest and align it with their development priorities.

Also, we should let Google know that becoming a “Roon Ready” would be of interest to the audiophile community. I searched their support forum for “Roon” and came up with link where someone mispelled “Room”.

So, I’ve started a link to foster such discussion here: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chromecast/AluKnc0gma0;context-place=topicsearchin/chromecast/category$3A(discuss-and-give-feedback)$20is$3Afirstpost|sort:relevance

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You’ve got my support and I’ve posted on your link, good luck

Same here.

And here. Much anticipated around here.

@brian , any chance we could install the RoonBridge bits on the Chromecast Audio? Guessing that’s a pipe dream, but I’d be curious to know what turnkey-ish devices you’re aware of in the marketplace that where the bits could easily be installed and hooked into an existing receiver or pre/pro.

Hi Keith,

As set out above, Chromecast support is on the roadmap and is coming. It’s not yet clear whether a Chromecast zone will be able to be grouped with RAAT zones. There are interesting similarities in the way RAAT and Google’s Cast protocol use run time scripting.

Unfortunately, we can’t simply install RoonBridge on a Chromecast Audio for a number of reasons, but Chromecast support is coming.

Thanks Andy, I figured as much but had to ask. I was asking about Chromecast Audio because I’m looking for a device that I can put the bridge software on so I can remove an AirPlay and have everything RAAT-based. What on-the-cheap options can you think of aside from Raspberry Pi?

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Just made an identical request in another thread. Very interested in what options there might be.

Anything that can run Linux really. Cubox-i is a good choice. BeagleBone Black and WandBoard are others.

I think an image for the Pi and Cubox-i are planned but for the moment you have to install onto Linux. Brian referred to the “easy installer” script for Raspbian Jessie Lite here and the KB page is here.

Now the dust is settling a little on 1.2 (gross oversimplification, sorry) has there been any roadmap progress on Chromecast Audio as a roonbridge endpoint ? This would be a game changer, so I am interested in what progress if any ?

Was there ever any stated intent?

Oh yes…

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/chromecast-audio-as-endpoint-on-roadmap/

I’ve merged the posts to keep the history together.