The Unofficial Apple Events App for MacOS with Chromecast Support (opens in new tab)

(github.com)

97 pointsinsidegui9y ago15 comments

15 comments

Did you reverse engineer the Chromecast protocol ? Or is it opensource now ?

The Chromecast protocol specification (CASTV2) itself is sort of open. To implement it on macOS I did a little bit of reverse engineering and used a description of the protocol I found here: https://github.com/thibauts/node-castv2

alexbilbie9y ago

It's open source - https://developers.google.com/cast/

lmedinas9y ago

But unfortunately is only available for "Android, Chrome or iOS app"

So this means other applications like Firefox, VLC etc... would have to reverse engineer the protocol.

2 more replies

fzn9y ago

There might be a naming clash here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_event

insideguiOP9y ago

Hahahahaha true!

soapdog9y ago

Yes, I went to the link quite happy because I thought it was related to AppleEvents and maybe Apple Scripts. Your app is definitely cool, congratulations on your work but the name got me fooled.

PS: Maybe the HN people haven't used MacOS 9 and AppleScript a lot and will not do the association I did.

sumitgt9y ago

This is nice. Though, I plan on going through the source code later, can you give a short gist of how it works?

insideguiOP9y ago

I don't know which part you're most interested in, but in a nutshell: the events are fetched from the same API as the Apple TV Events app (found that using a proxy), the Chromecast streaming uses Bonjour to find Chromecast devices on the network and the CASTV2 protocol over TCP to send commands to them.

sanjeetsuhag9y ago

How what works ? Are you asking about the fetching of the streams or the Chromecast support ?

oceanghost9y ago

I've done a lot of cast hacking for my employer-- very interested in this :)

alexpersian9y ago

Fantastic! Thanks for the continued work Guilherme!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

15 comments

lmedinas9y ago

Did you reverse engineer the Chromecast protocol ? Or is it opensource now ?

insideguiOP9y ago

alexbilbie9y ago

It's open source - https://developers.google.com/cast/

lmedinas9y ago

But unfortunately is only available for "Android, Chrome or iOS app"

So this means other applications like Firefox, VLC etc... would have to reverse engineer the protocol.

2 more replies

fzn9y ago

There might be a naming clash here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_event

insideguiOP9y ago

Hahahahaha true!

soapdog9y ago

Yes, I went to the link quite happy because I thought it was related to AppleEvents and maybe Apple Scripts. Your app is definitely cool, congratulations on your work but the name got me fooled.

PS: Maybe the HN people haven't used MacOS 9 and AppleScript a lot and will not do the association I did.

sumitgt9y ago

This is nice. Though, I plan on going through the source code later, can you give a short gist of how it works?

insideguiOP9y ago

sanjeetsuhag9y ago

How what works ? Are you asking about the fetching of the streams or the Chromecast support ?

oceanghost9y ago

I've done a lot of cast hacking for my employer-- very interested in this :)

alexpersian9y ago

Fantastic! Thanks for the continued work Guilherme!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse