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The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
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On another note, I bough a ChromeCast (v2) Friday... I hacked my way into it and are now (programmatically) able to cast a Plex Media item to it :-)
This means I will probably be able to support ChromeCast. This means that even if your main Plex Player is for example your Samsung TV, you could fork out 35 euros for a chromecast and still use Homey on it (just not using the samsung plex app..). It is a start I guess.
I'll do my best to include chromecast in the driver.
BTW - before we start this (which in principle I'm fine with) - I need to focus on getting the Plex app ready ASAP. Further cleanup and interface definitions will have to wait until it's fully functional I guess.
Once it has been approved, I am expecting issues when it's released in the wild and used on PMS's, PHT's and ChromeCasts on OS's and Networks that have never been tested. Please feel free to comment on this thread with any issues you might encounter. Obvious bugs can be reported on the Github issue tracker. I'm inviting contributors as well so feel free to discuss features you'd like to code and submit Pull Requests.
Good to see your progress here.
Still wondering about your epiphany though, I could use a ChromeCast but i really like the Samsung Plex app and it's development. Any news to share @MikeOne ?
Pairing with Plex.tv works fine. I can add my Synology NAS as the Media server. Works great.
I can then add my Sony Bravia AndroidTV as a Chromecast device. It does not recognize the Plex installation otherwise. It also recognizes my Philips Hue there... strange thing
I can say "I want to watch Deadpool" and it starts it over Chromecast. Sadly it's a bit slower to start than via the Plex app on the remote control, however, the coolness factor is very high!
I just told Homey "I want to watch Transformers".
Homey responds:
"I found 3 matching results for transformers. Which would you like to watch? Age of extinction, Dark of the moon, revenge of the fallen, transformers?"
I replied: "Age of extinction". And within a second it started playing. This is the greatest app on Homey if you ask me
I don't even have to turn on my TV, it start automatically when it starts Chromecast'ing.
Two notes you might want to add to the documentation / settings page:
1. After pairing, you need to setup a device before you can use the app.
2. when using flows, the triggers are in the 'app' while the action is in the 'device' that you added.
Two requests from my side:
1. Create a pause-function, and add a trigger to that.
2. Just name the app 'Plex'. Looking at the other apps, 'Homey Nest app' is just called 'Nest'
My appreciation for Homey grew once more, now that I can tell Homey what I want to watch and add 'scenes' to your triggers (for example: set an appropiate volume level for watching movies, use some cool dimmed Hue lights, close the Hallox curtains, if light level > 50 and no rain is expected close the Somfy blinds).
Thanks so much for this great app!
@jorden - Thanks! I really appreciate that. With regards to your feedback, you are totally right, I need to beef up the instructions. I also need to make the App Setting page much more descriptive. BTW, If you paired your server and didn't yet install any players (using the devices page) - and you ask Homey to watch something, Homey should actually give you instructions ("I couldn't find any installed players, please go to the Devices page to install one").
With regards to your notes:
1) Agreed
2) Yes- this is a Homey thing I'm afraid. I'm not sure how to change this. Because the plex app supports multiple drivers, you need to be able to select one in the flow - that is why you get an additional device in the Flow Editor. The trigger however is an App thing and programmatically unrelated to which driver you want to use.
1) Pause should actually work, however, there might be a bug there with the ChromeCast driver. I'll check that.
2) I might actually rename it indeed :-)
- There are some other side-notes. I don't have many setups available to test on so it is possible that other setups encounter issues. Also, the ChromeCast implementation is pretty much a reverse-engineered hack as I'm bypassing the 'real' cast capabilities that the Plex Web player and IOS/Android players have. This also means that PMS doesn't actually report an active playing session for something playing something on the chromecast. This has as a result that the Plex App is unable to perform certain features that DO work in a PHT session (like Automatically select the next episode of a TV show etc).
This release is a start - it should be expanded on further.
What I do need though is a solution for multiple drivers in combination with Flows. I have duplication now in my App in order to show (and handle the events of) the separate device actions. It seems it is not possible (?) to either define 2 identical ID's as flow ids or add mulitple driver sections in a single flow definition. I guess the way I implemented player types as separate drivers is a slightly different concept then intended.
Oh and indeed it did tell me that I didn't setup a device yet. It's just that I thought it would be a smoother installation if it would mention it.
Thanks!
..is causing me issues. As I really don't yet know which driver_id I need (as I have more than one driver). So in order for a user to select a specific device (or driver really) in a flow, I have to duplicate that action block. I tried to simply add another 'device' object inside args, but this doesn't seem to work.. Maybe you can have a quick look at my app.json file and give me some advice on how to improve it?
Not sure if this helps with your problem, more of an architecture thingie:p
Good advice though, I'm all for separation of concerns so I will implement your advice in a next version as it indeed makes more sense like that - thanks!
You know what's going on with Emile btw? He hasn't responded to me in a while (maybe he is tired of me - which is understandable :-)).
"devices": [ { id: "abcd" }], // list of device_data objects of founds devices. If one or more zones are mentioned, only devices in those zones are returned
If I install a device, let's say in the kitchen, and I tell my app to watch a movie in the kitchen, I get a zone back (with ID and stuff) - but not the device that was installed in that zone. However, If I give my device (player) a friendly name (by renaming it), than I can ask Homey to play on that specific device ("watch on 'chrome' - if I rename my chromecast to just 'chrome') - in that case the correct device is in the devices array.
So in short - I'm either doing something stupid that prevents Homey from giving the actual device reference when a zone is detected in speech - or there is a bug. I'd like to find out which :-)