SecuritySpy and Chromecast + screensaver
I recently got my hands on a Google Chromecast and wondered how well it would work to remotely view SecuritySpy video on a TV. I only saw one brief mention last year of using one, so I thought I'd see what I could do with it. A simple problem I have is that the Mac Mini running SS is in the back room, and I want a TV or something up front to display it (without burning another mini just to run a browser). I found out it works pretty well for me, so I'd recommend giving it a try.
After installing everything (this was very simple), a little tiny drop-down in the Chrome browser's streaming tab lets you stream the entire screen contents to a Chromecast, not just a browser tab. (beta feature?) Throw on the SecuritySpy screen saver, tell Chrome to mirror the full screen, activate the screen saver and you're set. Full screen camera video piped to a TV in another room for $35!
(of course one could use a chromecast for streaming other interesting things, but we're being selfish here)
I like the screensaver view instead of a browser window open to the web ui, a lot less wasted screen real estate. Setup of the thing was amazingly simple. Plugged it into a tv, then downloaded an installer app from google. Somehow my laptop (already on WPA2'd wi-fi) magically found the chromecast without fiddling with some hokey discovery scheme. My laptop wi-fi briefly re-associated during setup for a few seconds, then finished. From then on I could use the Chrome browser plug-in on any computer to stream to the TV. Didn't try with Firefox; nor Windows.
--bwann
After installing everything (this was very simple), a little tiny drop-down in the Chrome browser's streaming tab lets you stream the entire screen contents to a Chromecast, not just a browser tab. (beta feature?) Throw on the SecuritySpy screen saver, tell Chrome to mirror the full screen, activate the screen saver and you're set. Full screen camera video piped to a TV in another room for $35!
(of course one could use a chromecast for streaming other interesting things, but we're being selfish here)
I like the screensaver view instead of a browser window open to the web ui, a lot less wasted screen real estate. Setup of the thing was amazingly simple. Plugged it into a tv, then downloaded an installer app from google. Somehow my laptop (already on WPA2'd wi-fi) magically found the chromecast without fiddling with some hokey discovery scheme. My laptop wi-fi briefly re-associated during setup for a few seconds, then finished. From then on I could use the Chrome browser plug-in on any computer to stream to the TV. Didn't try with Firefox; nor Windows.
--bwann
Comments
-
Many thanks for posting this information, it sounds like a really nice solution and I'm sure this will be of interest to many users!
