Cast-web-api Album Art

Hey all!

First off, great work!! Loving all the improvements.

Current Issue: Using cast-web-api to have all of my chromecast audio devices show up as Things in Smartthings. When I add the tile as an Album Art Tile, the cover art does not display for the device that is currently playing on Spotify. The song title does, but never the cover art… am I missing something?

Can you link to the Cast Web API device handler? It sounds like it doesn’t report back the track data in the expected format.

Thanks for the quick reply! Sorry, not understanding your question… can you elaborate?(may be too early for me :smile:)

Just asking for a link to more details on the integration. Eg. The main release thread on the SmartThings community or the GitHub repo.

I think I found it:

I’m on mobile at the moment so it’s difficult to read through the code at the moment, but my suspicion is that it’s not reporting back the required data to display the album art. I’ll take a closer look when I’m back at a PC and will see if we can make some suggestions to the cast-web-api developer so that it reports back the required data.

Ah, yeah sorry! That is the correct one.

Thanks again! Looking forward to a resolution–since this is one of the main reasons I went premium! :wink:

Also, since you know the dev, didn’t know if there was a way to have a “MAIN” tile that showed the current chromecast playing, instead of specific to the chromecast device?

For example: Instead of adding my “Kitchen Speaker” tile to a dashboard, I would just add a “universal” chromecast tile, which would then pull info from whatever device is currently playing on my network.

Don’t think so, but worth the question! Thanks!!!

To be transparent, I don’t know the dev - I just found the community post from a Google search and figured I could review the code and/or pass on the required details. It’s up to the developer to determine if the API exposes the required details and if they will implement them. :wink:

For your request on an improvement to the device handler, I would recommend posting in the linked cast-web-api community post as that’s what the Help page of the cast-web-api site requests:

So, you have a problem with cast-web? Don’t worry!

First check the FAQ.

Then have a quick look at the SmartThings community forum thread.

If you cannot find the answer there, just signup and ask your question on the forum.

If the integration exposed an ‘active’ / ‘main’ / ‘primary’ device of some sort, then you could use that just like a normal tile.

I’m not sure how feasible that really is though as I’m not sure what heuristics you could use as everybody’s use case is going to be slightly different. For example if I’m playing music in my office and my kids are listening to music in their bedrooms, which one is the ‘main’ in that scenario? Anyway, still probably best to ask in the main community post for the cast-web-api integration as the integration would need to expose some sort of Thing for us to hook into.

Thanks for the info! I have submitted a post in the forum, and I will post back here if there is a resolution.

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I was able to get cast-web-api running and took a look at their data format. I’ve gone ahead and updated the Album Art Tile to include compatibility for the cast-web-api format in beta. I’ve sent you a PM with more details. :slight_smile:

PS. I’ve also posted details in the cast-web-api thread requesting that the device author update to the same field names used by Sonos… this compatibility ‘shim’ that I’ve added in beta would still be there, but it’s preferable if music devices in SmartThings all follow the same standard.

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Have we abandoned any hope of this working? I first installed the raspi node js cast-web-api solution ages ago in the first version but the SD card on my raspi died so I only just recently revisited it. There is now a Windows solution which for I figured I would at least trial and have to say that i’m pleasantly surprised in that it was an extremely easy install and i was able to find my chromecasts on the network with the ST app and then use webcore to send announcements couldn’t get the app to play anything on the chromecasts and likewise, if i play something in Spotify, nothing is updated in Smartthings for what is playing and this is obviously the same on my SharpTools dashboard as well. @josh you mentioned that you would do make some workarounds in the beta version, how might i use that? (I’m already a beta member). I would totally have given up on this ever working, but it looks like you have widgets populated by real artist data in the screenshots above or are they just mockups?

My apologies for not updating this thread! We released the update to the Album Art Tile which brings support for the cast-web-api devices to everyone in an early January release. It was included in the following update:


It sounds like that’s where the problem lies. The cast web device in SmartThings needs to be updating in order for SharpTools to update. :slight_smile:

Can you clarify what is working? It sounds like the cast-web-api integration was able to discover your devices and you can use those devices to send announcements… but you’re not seeing the device details update with track related information?

Have you posted in the cast-web-api thread in the SmartThings community?

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@josh A little late to the Album Art Party for cast-web-api…

Is it possible to change the Label or other attributes for the Tiles ? I use odd labels (historically from Classic Smartthings App) to segment the nature of my devices e.g. my Kitchen Google Home is called “V -Kitchen GH” and my Kitchen Speakers are “V- Kitchen Speakers”.

I can change the Label / Custom Style on the Player Tile.

If I can change the Name or Label at the Thing Level or Album Art Tile Level it’d be great.

Any ideas ?

PS : Sometimes the Images provided don’t scale, such as Images dragged in from TuneIn :slight_smile: Thanks in advance !

@josh In the short term as the Default Tile was Black / Amber / White I’ve rebuilt all of the dashboards in scalable and then changed all of Default Tiles to a new Black / Amber / White style and changed the Default Style to Black / Black / Black.

Scaling the Album Art tile would be good though !

Can you share a screenshot of what you’re talking about? The album art is scaled full bleed. It’s likely that the artwork itself has white space within it.

We’ve seen another reports of tune in stations having transparent artwork with excessive white space in it.

@josh You can see the GH running in the Bottom Left. The Radio Station is Eruption Radio UK for you to check the image source there.

You can see Bottom Right the Tile for the Bedroom GH that is now using the Default Black /.Black / Black style to remove the Default Label that I couldn’t change…

EDIT : I can modify the Tile Size, but that is optimised for You Tube Music Image sizes.

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