Make Your Own Remote Control for Google Home and Chromecasts

Normally, the Google Home permits only control by touch and voice and you always need to have your smart phone/tablet by your side to control Chromcasts. Moreover, neither touch, nor voice commands can match the satisfaction that a clickable control offers.

This project implements a 2in1 remote using which you can control both your Chomecast and Google Home. The project costs just about $15 and you need not think twice before handing over this remote to your kids, unlike your smart devices.

pi-gcast-remote

DIY Remote control for Google Cast Devices using Raspberry Pi Zero and Pimoroni Button SHIM.

Step 1 - Install drivers for Button SHIM using:

sudo curl https://get.pimoroni.com/buttonshim | bash  

Step 2 - Install dependencies using:

sudo apt-get install git  
sudo pip3 install pychromecast  

Step 3 - Clone the project using:

cd /home/pi/  
sudo git clone https://github.com/shivasiddharth/pi-gcast-remote  

Step 4 - Declare your Google Cast devices in the g-cast-controller.py script

#Enter the IP Addresses of your Google Cast devices   
chromecasts_ip=['192.168.1.4','192.168.1.13']      
#Enter the names of the Google Cast devices as in the Google App  
chromecasts_name=['Living Room Speaker','Living Room TV']  

Step 5 - Setup the script to start on boot using:

sudo chmod +x /home/pi/pi-gcast-remote/scripts/service-installer.sh  
sudo /home/pi/pi-gcast-remote/scripts/service-installer.sh  

Step 6 - Enable the service to start on boot:

sudo systemctl enable gcastremote.service   

To switch between the devices, press and hold the A button/key.

Note: pychromecast API takes time to get the list of active devices, hence continuous device status monitoring has not been added as it would cause delays to get a response from a device on button press. So the remote control program should be started after making sure that your devices are online.