Turn your computer into your own Chromecast

UPDATE: this project is no longer working because Google has locked down their entire API.

Google Chromecasts are neat little devices that let you ‘cast’ (send) media from your phone or tablet to play on your TV. If however, you already have a computer hooked up to your TV you don’t need to go out and buy a new device simply to have the same functionality. Instead you can install the excellent Leapcast program and accomplish the same functionality.

Leapcast works on all major operating systems – Windows, Mac and Linux – but for the purposes of this post I’m going to be focusing on how to set it up on a Debian based Linux distribution.

Step 1) Install Google Chrome browser

The Google Chrome browser is required for Leapcast to work correctly so the first thing you’ll need to do is head over to the download page and install it.

Step 2) Install miscellaneous required applications and libraries

Leapcast also requires a few extra tools and libraries to be installed.

sudo apt-get install virtualenvwrapper python-pip python-twisted-web python2.7-dev

Step 3) Download Leapcast

Head over to the GitHub page and download the zip of the latest Leapcast code. Alternatively you can also install git and use it to grab the latest code that way:

git clone https://github.com/dz0ny/leapcast.git

Step 4) Install Leapcast

In the leapcast directory run the following command. Note you may need to be root in order to do this without error.

sudo python setup.py develop

Step 5) Run Leapcast

Now that Leapcast is install you should be able to run it. Simply open a terminal and type

leapcast

There are some other neat options you can pass it as well. For example if you want your computer to show up as, say, TheLinuxExperiment when someone goes to cast to it simply pass the –name parameter.

leapcast --name TheLinuxExperiment

Happy casting!