emp-chromecast-receiver-2

EMP Chromecast Receiver 2

This document provides an overview of building a custom Google Cast receiver application. https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/custom_receiver. Your custom receiver application has to be deployed to a web server with a domain name and SSL support. The url to the receiver application has to be registered at Google, with a company account owning the streaming services. https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/registration Google Cast SDK Developer Console https://cast.google.com/u/2/publish/#/overview

The receiver is compliant with the default chromecast receiver API unless otherwise stated. For information on how to build a sender and other additional functionalities see https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/sender_apps

• Upgrade Guide
• Chromcast sender tutorials
• Release notes
• Hosted API docs

Hosted Demo receiverAppId E5A43176 (private)

Development

A demo receiver app that uses this package is available here

Starting development

As a developer you need to add custom ui-logic to the receiver-app and customize the index.html file. To build the code there are a few requirements

• Node.js -- We use Node for build and test automation. Download and install Node.js
• grunt-cli

Unix-based systems

sudo npm install -g grunt-cli

Windows

npm install -g grunt-cli

to setup your project

npm install

to build a local copy of the receiver

grunt build

pull update from emp-chromecast-receiver-2 npm package. (will overwrite images, css, index.html and emp-receiver-app.js)

grunt update

then deploy the dist directory in any webserver, add the webserver-URL in Google Cast SDK Developer Console and enjoy!

Grunt commands

Some grunt tasks are available:

grunt

grunt build

Builds the code and and places the final app in the dist folder.

grunt deploy

An example on how to use ftp to send the app to a webserver. If the ftp server requires authentication, credentials should be placed in a .ftpauth file in the root of the project

About the code

Javascript for the receiver is written using the new ES6 standard. Using grunt tasks this is then re-written into the ES5 standard. To learn more about Es6 see babel. To keep our code clean and separated, we uses Browserify. This allows us to use require statements to import javascript code from other files.

All of the above is done automatically using the grunt build system, but during development one should be aware of the power, and the limitations of both systems.

Separate UI-logic

The receiver has separated ui-logic and playback-logic. emp-receiver playback-logic is installed from a npm package. Run npm install to get all depending npm packages. As a developer you need to add custom ui-logic to the receiver-app and customize the index.html file. Receiver-app should implement an event listener for METADATA_UPDATED: fired when a program change occurs, should be used to display title and images about the current program. STATE_CHANGED: fired when playback state has changed, should be used to display a play icon, buffer spinner etc. emp-receiver exposes the inner emp-player, other playback events can be handled directly on the emp-player. Receiver-app.js and index.html are samples of how to implement a custom emp-receiver.

EMP Chromecast Receiver

Note: Slow embedded devices like Chromecast version 1 have problem to start casting with big bundle javascript, link script separately in index.html like this instead:

 <script type="text/javascript" src="//www.gstatic.com/cast/sdk/libs/receiver/2.0.0/cast_receiver.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="//www.gstatic.com/cast/sdk/libs/mediaplayer/1.0.0/media_player.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="js/video.min.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="js/emp-player.min.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="js/emp-shaka.min.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="js/emp-receiver-your-app.min.js"></script>

See this demo index.html

See EMP-Receiver API Docs

emp-player options can be send to empReceiver constructor and emp-player events can be subscribed to.

  let options = {
      debug: false,
      playerOptions: {
        empshaka: {
          abr: {
              // startBitrate 5Mbps
            defaultBandwidthEstimate: 5e6
          }
        }
      }
    };

    this.empReceiver_ = new empReceiver(player, options, () => {
      this.empReceiver_.player.on(empPlayer.Events.PLAYING, this.onPlayStateChange_.bind(this));
      this.empReceiver_.player.on(empPlayer.Events.PAUSE, this.onPlayStateChange_.bind(this));
      this.empReceiver_.player.on(empPlayer.Events.SEEKING, this.onPlayStateChange_.bind(this));
      this.empReceiver_.player.on(empPlayer.Events.WAITING, this.onPlayStateChange_.bind(this));
      this.empReceiver_.player.on(empPlayer.Events.ENDED, this.onPlayStateChange_.bind(this));
      this.empReceiver_.player.on(empPlayer.Events.ERROR, this.onPlayStateChange_.bind(this));
    });

EMP HTML5 Player

The receiver makes use of emp-player version 2.

• emp-player docs
• emp-player npm