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The Unofficial Apple Events App for MacOS with Chromecast Support

97 points by insidegui 10y ago

alexpersian 10y ago
Fantastic! Thanks for the continued work Guilherme!
sumitgt 10y ago
This is nice. Though, I plan on going through the source code later, can you give a short gist of how it works?
- sanjeetsuhag 10y ago
  How what works ? Are you asking about the fetching of the streams or the Chromecast support ?
- insidegui 10y 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.
oceanghost 10y ago
I've done a lot of cast hacking for my employer-- very interested in this :)
lmedinas 10y ago
Did you reverse engineer the Chromecast protocol ? Or is it opensource now ?
- alexbilbie 10y ago
  It's open source - https://developers.google.com/cast/ https://developers.google.com/cast/
  - lmedinas 10y 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.
    - Rexxar 10y ago
      reverse engineering != porting to an other platform edit: but is it really open source as said by previous comment or is it just an SDK ?
      - mcintyre1994 10y ago
        It's closed source. This project uses an open source implementation he wrote himself: https://github.com/insidegui/ChromeCastCore https://github.com/insidegui/ChromeCastCore > This framework implements the Google Cast APIs so they can be used in macOS apps. Google provides an official SDK but it is only for iOS and closed source.
    - lorenzhs 10y ago
      VLC has Chromecast support in the development version, and has had it for over a year now. They had to reverse-engineer the protocol. I think the UI is a bit cludgey but it works.
- insidegui 10y ago
  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 https://github.com/thibauts/node-castv2
fzn 10y ago
There might be a naming clash here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_event
- insidegui 10y ago
  Hahahahaha true!
  - soapdog 10y 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.

97 points by insidegui 10y ago

alexpersian 10y ago

Fantastic! Thanks for the continued work Guilherme!

sumitgt 10y ago

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

sanjeetsuhag 10y ago
How what works ? Are you asking about the fetching of the streams or the Chromecast support ?
insidegui 10y 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.

oceanghost 10y ago

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

lmedinas 10y ago

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

alexbilbie 10y ago
It's open source - https://developers.google.com/cast/ https://developers.google.com/cast/
- lmedinas 10y 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.
  - Rexxar 10y ago
    reverse engineering != porting to an other platform edit: but is it really open source as said by previous comment or is it just an SDK ?
    - mcintyre1994 10y ago
      It's closed source. This project uses an open source implementation he wrote himself: https://github.com/insidegui/ChromeCastCore https://github.com/insidegui/ChromeCastCore > This framework implements the Google Cast APIs so they can be used in macOS apps. Google provides an official SDK but it is only for iOS and closed source.
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    VLC has Chromecast support in the development version, and has had it for over a year now. They had to reverse-engineer the protocol. I think the UI is a bit cludgey but it works.
insidegui 10y ago
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 https://github.com/thibauts/node-castv2

fzn 10y ago

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

insidegui 10y ago
Hahahahaha true!
- soapdog 10y 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.