Ask HN: For Any HN Googlers That Work on Chromecast
The Chromecast is a really nice piece of inexpensive hardware and it has some built-in functionality that is almost perfect for the needs of a basic digital signage solution, but it is missing a few features that would make it VERY useful in this regard. Recently, the Chromecast has added some extra options that allow us to pull from Google Photos, Flickr, Facebook, etc.
This works well at home but it doesn't work as well in a business setting.
What I'm proposing is rather simple, but I believe coupled with the Chromecast ethernet adapter, it would make for a pretty powerful single-screen digital signage option for campuses.
This is all I'd want: the ability to specify in our Chromecast settings a URL to a JSON document which would describe the files we'd want to appear.
At a basic level this file would allow for specifying URLs to photos an organization might have on a web server, but additionally it would allow URLs to MP4 files too to allow for more complex displays. Optionally a text caption or .srt file could be specified for each file.
The Chromecast would be able to read this format and simply use that to start showing images/video on the screen it's connected to without any additional user intervention (every so often it should recheck the URL and scan for any changes so it can automatically pick those up to start showing updated content).
The benefit of this approach is it would be setup at the system level, so no manual "casting" would be required and would only need to be setup once in an area.
Anyhow, just an idea...but I really do hope there are some Googlers on here that could take the thought to heart and help make it a reality (for me and others :-)!
Thank you!