Hotel Cast

A Chromecast alternative that works on hotel WiFi.
Live Demo

Why??

Since I travel for work I never can use my chromecast since most hotel networks isolate clients or require a sign in page. Both of these cause the chromecast not to work. So I took it into my own hands to write and application to fix this. Yes I could have just bought a travel router or a Roku, but I like a good challenge!

I normally just plug my laptop into the TV and watch whatever I need. That is fine and all but playing, pausing, changing videos requires me to get up and interact with my computer. I tried using TeamViewer on my phone to control it but it just didn't work well. So I took things into my own hands and wrote an app I call it HotelCast!

How it works:

It consists of three parts:

CLIENT:

• Client uses a front facing web app that servers as control for the local server.
• Client selects the show/movie/Youtube video they want to watch the link is written to the command file

CLOUD SERVER:

• Serves frontend
• Servers and hosts the command file of what to "cast" (play) on local computer
• Django webapp

Local Server:

• Local server pulls from the cloud server the commands to run via a python script.
• The script is constantly querying the cloud server for changes to the command file.

EXAMPLE:

Client:

• Client selects a episode of a show on netflix (pakrs and rec, season 1, episode 7)
• WebApp writes to cloud server file (command.txt) the direct URL to play (the Netflix video)

Cloud Server :

• Serves command file containing Netflix watch URL (command.txt)

Local server:

• Using python I query the cloud server for the command.txt(command.txt)
• I then use python to play the url (doesn't matter if its netflix, hulu, youtube, ect) in chrome (Selenium ChromeDriver) in full screen

Requirements

• Python 2.7
• Django 1.11.16
• Guidebox
• Python Requests
• Selnium

About

Idea and code was writen by: Grant Siders. Feel free to contriube by forking the repo and opening a pull request!