PiCast For Raspberry Pi: An Open Source Alternative To Google Chromecast

Google’s HDMI Streaming ‘Dongle’ Chromecast managed Google Chromecast HDMI Streaming Media Player Launched - Is Apple TV Scared?from the 2013 Nexus 7 at the launch event held last month due to its simplicity and price. Since the product went out of stock from various online shopping websites Lance Seidman could not get his hands on one, so he thought of making a Chromecast alternative. He fiddled about with his 35 dollar Raspberry Pi and came up with PiCast. His initial efforts have already bore fruit as he is able to steam YouTube videos from his computer to a HDTV. He has put up his code on his GitHub - lanceseidman/PiCAST: PiCAST turns your $35 Raspberry Pi in to a Chromecast like Device. page with the hope that other Pi enthusiasts shall work on improving the code and add other streaming services to the list.


While he working on bringing music streaming services to the PiCast, #-Link-Snipped-# has tried to find a few upsides to his efforts. Starting with services, while the Chromecast has the capability to stream video from few services like Netfliix and YouTube, custom code can help the PiCast stream other services like Hulu. Next as the Raspberry Pi has Ethernet, it could also give users the option to stream local video stored on the hard drive as well. Finally, it could help Windows Phone users to stream their content. As you might be aware that Chromecast is not compatible with Windows Phone as it does not have a Chrome browser. While a commercial version of his innovation is not on the horizon, we sure that Pi tinkers shall be interested in improving his work, till then have a look at a demo in the video below.