Idea: castnow-webserver

[hubertbanas]

Simon, I understand that new "Issue" is not the right place to share ideas but I thought we can use it for now.

After using castnow to stream online content I'm amazed how well this works. I currently have it loaded on one of my Debian Wheezy box that I have on LAN. This way I have a central place that I can go to and start the stream. The box is CLI only.

The immediate idea I had was to have castnow-webserver which would serve web interface around castnow so no ssh would be needed to start the stream. What do you all think?

[xat]

It's perfectly fine to share and discuss new ideas here :)

I've already made some thoughts to castnow-webserver. Basicly I see two possibilities:

1. Idea: castnow becomes two options --listen and --share=</path/to/dir. The --listen option will start a webserver which provides a minimalistic GUI. The GUI has an input field where users can paste in media resources and then hit an "cast"-button. Also some checkboxes would be needed, so that stuff like --tomp4 could be set. If the --share parameter is set the GUI gets extended with an filebrowser, so users can choose directories or single files they want to play. The focus of this GUI should really be simplicity. I don't think a bloated mediacenter type of thing is needed.
2. Idea: Instead of integrating the webserver thing directly to castnow we could create a separate project for this. In that case I would extract all plugins from castnow into single repos / node-modules. This way castnow and castnow-webserver could rely on the same plugins.

[xat]

Oh and having a progress-bar would also be nice in the Web GUI :)

[hubertbanas]

Your Idea (1) is exactly what I was thinking. I also agree that simplicity should be the main focus. Progress-bar and basic control such as pause/play/volume etc would be a nice addition if possible.

[xat]

Yep, I agree that pause/play/volume is also needed. And I'm also tending more to 1.) at the moment.

[hubertbanas]

Ohh --device will be needed too. Maybe a way to "Save Options" ?

Multiple profiles with drop down menu comes to mind

• "Living room" profile
• "Bedroom" profile
• etc

[xat]

I agree that an input for the device is needed but I think profiles would be too much. This would require storage and stuff. I'd like to keep it stateless.

[hubertbanas]

I hear you. We don't need another plex.tv or mediabrowser.tv here. Simplicity should be the main focus. I fully agree with you.

[xat]

Small gimmick: Besides the UI components for play/pause etc. we could also allow player control with the same keys like used in the commandline :)

[hubertbanas]

I like that! Unified player control across the board.

[robclancy]

Why not node-webkit it and use some frontend framework to keep the UI updated. reactjs is actually very suited to applications made with node-webkit.

I'd like to do it myself but just lack time as I'm sure you do as well.

EDIT: oh btw love this so much, my chromecast was almost useless without this

[ferezvi]

Hi there i think it could be possible to implement a page like this http://ferezvi.github.io/castnowui/ its just html css and jquery javascript, maybe you guys can help me make it better (btw its responsive i think it looks great on mobile devices).

[xat]

@ferezvi wow, nice work. I really like the simplicity :+1: I'm crappy at Design/CSS but maybe some of the other guys here can help you bring this further. And I'll also ask my colleague @zooom.

@robclancy With castnow v0.5 people will be able to easily develop stuff like a node-webkit app on top of castnow. I think castnow by itself should stay small and simple. node-webkit would involve packaging the app with chromium for different platforms which would make it really big and clumsy.

[robclancy]

Yeah I have already been playing with node-webkit to create an interface with it, just lacking the time.

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 8:52 PM, Simon Kusterer notifications@github.com wrote:

@ferezvi https://github.com/ferezvi wow, nice work. I really like the simplicity [image: :+1:] I'm crappy at Design/CSS but maybe some of the other guys here can help you bring this further. And I'll also ask my colleague @zooom https://github.com/zooom.

@robclancy https://github.com/robclancy With castnow v0.5 people will be able to easily develop stuff like a node-webkit app on top of castnow. I think castnow by itself should stay small and simple. node-webkit would involve packaging the app with chromium for different platforms which would make it really big and clumsy.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/xat/castnow/issues/29#issuecomment-71363452.

[ferezvi]

Thanks, design will be simple, maybe you can give me an example to link a button to send something to the chromecast and start to make it useful and Thanks for your work.

[mikaelhm]

@ferezvi nice work on the UI.

My first thought was also to us NW.js (http://nwjs.io/, former node-webkit).

But I would actually rather have in my browser, so one can manage it from a phone, tablet etc.

[cburmeister]

Has anyone done more work on this?

I'm working on a python web server that displays my media -- once a media file is clicked the server starts up a castnow process and starts streaming the media file -- then the idea is to expose the castnow keyboard commands as links in the browser.

[n1tr0-5urf3r]

I wrote a simple php script with html buttons sending single bash commands to a running castnow process running in a screen, can play/pause, stop mute/unmute, start new playlists and all the other things with this The screen comes up at boot and is available for the webserver user at all time Only thing missing by now is a progress bar/status on my webpage

[cburmeister]

I've solved most of the problems in this thread here:

https://github.com/cburmeister/fluid

Would love some help!

[zachatrocity]

Here is a start for @xat's first idea.

https://github.com/zachatrocity/castnow-webserver

If enough people want this lets join forces!