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NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

by nedp on 6/12/21, 8:23 AM with 69 comments

  • by alias_neo on 6/12/21, 1:07 PM

    There is clearly a lot of misunderstanding in the comments here. I feel like the repository is causing confusion by referring to Chromecast.

    This has nothing to do with Chromecast, nor does it have anything to do with Google Cast, nor will it let or help you "Cast" anything like YouTube to your Cast capable devices.

    What this is, is an (early) software implementation to stream media from a control device (your phone etc) to an SBC or other machine running the server code, and connected to a TV or monitor. It appears that the media must be resident on the controller and not the server.

    It looks like they're aiming for multiple targets with "good" synchronisation, whatever that means.

    Looks like a nice toy project for someone but there seem to be far more mature tools out there, at least for multi-room audio.

    For video, if you don't need sync, Jellyfin (libre Emby fork) is quite capable.

  • by kingosticks on 6/12/21, 4:50 PM

    Technically it might be an "open-source Google Cast" alternative but it's definitely not an "Open-source Chromecast" alternative. If it was, I would be able to open any app that supports Google Cast and control a device running this software like I can control a Chromecast. But it doesn't support that, and that's what most people are expecting/wanting. It might be a great project but it's not able to provide the tight integration that makes Google Cast so good.

    And this title is misleading.

  • by gizdan on 6/12/21, 4:54 PM

    I'm curious. Usually when something like an open source alternative to a product is highly sought after feature, someone will often attempt to reverse engineer the apis or something mostly so it works with the current ecosystem. What has made Google Cast so resistant to this? I can't imagine the protocol being a complex one. Does anyone know?

  • by tucosan on 6/12/21, 10:00 AM

    Now, that's an esoteric choice of language. I'm curious about the rationale to chose Angelscript over the more common scripting languages.

  • by tmikaeld on 6/12/21, 9:49 AM

    Someone got really tired of there not being any good complete cross platform streaming alternatives to Chromecast ;-)

    That's a huge amount of effort between, love it!

  • by saagarjha on 6/12/21, 1:35 PM

  • by jrm4 on 6/12/21, 6:21 PM

    I thought this might have been the thing I'm looking for; relatively painless screencasting or sharing from a local (Linux) PC to another device on the network (e.g. Raspberry Pi + Big Screen TV). The use case isn't necessarily full motion video + audio, but more for business/conference room type use, where response time isn't wildly important, since it's something like a whiteboard.

    Monitor-over-network would be great too, but not a requirement; I'm aware that solutions exist, but so far everything I've tried has been painfully clunky.

  • by squarefoot on 6/12/21, 6:51 PM

    I don't understand the point behind "casting" something in a home environment, unless one keeps the client unsupervised. It could make sense in contexts where say one or more unsupervised signage displays are connected to small embedded boards that throw at the screens whatever feed is being streamed to them. That would be ok, but what about home environments?

    Let me give an example. I keep all my media in a home NAS (Nas4Free plus RAID etc.) as simple files (mpeg4 etc.). My home TV is connected to a RPi running Kodi that accesses the file list through SMB/NFS shares, as every other computer in the house. If I want to watch a movie, I use Kodi to navigate the file list until I find the relevant file and play it. There are no downsides since it's a one click solution, and the pretty good CEC support by Kodi and the RPi makes it a breeze (one single remote for both the TV and Kodi) but this way the file is being transcoded by the player (the RPi) and not by the streming hardware, which would be an often less powerful platform like a NAS. This also means the streamed content travels as compressed packets through the network, in fact loading it a lot less than for example it would happen when streaming it after transcoding. As a result, I could have like 10 machines watching each one its own Full HD movie on a home wired network, which would be unthinkable if the poor NAS had to transcode all of them on the fly, not to mention the much heavier network load.

    So the question is: what's the point in streaming in home environments rather than navigating file shares?

  • by matthewfcarlson on 6/12/21, 7:11 PM

    Completely unrelated but I would love a CLI/GUI type tool on my laptop that I could control a youtube client with. Most youtube clients on smart TV's, consoles, and streaming sticks support being controlled by a phone. I'd love to control it from my laptop instead of solely my phone.

  • by zozbot234 on 6/12/21, 4:03 PM

    https://github.com/albfan/miraclecast might be an interesting alternative, based on the widespread Miracast standard. No idea how up-to-daye that codebase is, though.

  • by mongol on 6/12/21, 10:40 AM

    Is this a completely independent effort or is it piggybacking on DLNA?

  • by StavrosK on 6/12/21, 10:38 AM

    This is excellent, finally we'll be able to cast to Raspberry Pis and other Linux-running computers. Well done!

  • by forgotpwd16 on 6/12/21, 10:24 AM

    Although often confused, the term Chromecast refers[0] to the product brand. The protocol is called[0] Google Cast. This is an open-source alternative to the software and the protocol (as it isn't a Cast implementation) rather the hardware.

    [0]: https://developers.google.com/cast/glossary#c

  • by _Microft on 6/12/21, 1:37 PM

    Just bringing this open source audio streaming solution also to your attention. It says that it supports Snapcast, Spotifyd / Spotify Connect, Shairport Sync / AirPlay and can act as a PulseAudio Sink:

    https://cast.otter.jetzt/

    According to one of its creators, the device can be ordered partially pre-assembled for $10 and requires additional parts worth another $10 to be soldered on by yourself.

    https://twitter.com/JanHenrikH/status/1374098303470682113

  • by bronco21016 on 6/12/21, 11:32 AM

    As many other commenters point out, I’m confused what this actually does?

    Does this allow me to turn a SBC into a Chromecast? Meaning, do I install this on a SBC, or any Linux machine, and magically I can cast YouTube to it from my phone?

    The README could use a quick FAQ of what this repo can and cannot do as it relates to the Chromecast/Google Cast ecosystem since they’re using that brand name in the description.

  • by taylorius on 6/12/21, 1:23 PM

    Sounds cool, though "nymph" gives it a vaguely erotic vibe, which might not be what you're after.

  • by zibzab on 6/12/21, 10:44 AM

    But this is still dependent in Google hardware and firmware?

    To be more specific, I will need to "onboard" a fresh chromecast into my network with Google Home before i can use this?