How to Create Virtual Chromecast Receiver On Your Computer

You may have heard about Google’s Chromecast TV Streamer, a new, little device from Google that lets you easily watch internet contents on TV. Once plugged into your TV, it can stream contents from Android or iOS devices and computer running the Chrome browser. Currently it works via apps for certain website only such as YouTube, Netflix and Google Play Movie.

Previously I had published an article about turning an Android phone into a Chromecast Receiver. Now here is how to create a virtual Chromecast receiver on your computer, so you can cast from your Android and iOS devices to your desktop.

A Github user dz0ny has come up with a tool named Leapcast, which can emulate the Chromecast hardware in Chromium environment running on your computer. Leapcast is a Python package and you can setup it on any computer running Windows, Mac and Linux. The below method is for Windows 8.

Pre requisites: Chrome browser, Python and Leapcast Python package.

1. Download and install Python for Windows (32bit). It will be installed in C:\Python27 directory.[Download from:http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.5/python-2.7.5.msi]

2. Add this Python directory to the Path variable so that you can simply call Python from the Windows command prompt by typing the keyword ‘python’. Run below command in command prompt:

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "$env:Path;C:\Python27\;C:\Python27\Scripts\", "User")

3. Now you need to download and install the third-party Python software called Distribute. It’ll extend the packaging and installation facilities. Save the downloaded Distribute in the root of C:\. Then, run the below command:

python c:\distribute_setup.py [Download from:http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py]

4. Also, download and install Pip, a tool for installing and managing Python packages. [Download from:http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/gut9fh28/pip-1.4.1.win32-py2.7.exe]

5. Then, download and install Twisted (networking framework written in Python) for Windows.[Download from:https://pypi.python.org/packages/2.7/T/Twisted/Twisted-13.1.0.win32-py2.7.msi#md5=24c315f31769a9e64841c41021f41290]

6. Now, download and install Github for Windows. Click to open the ‘Git Shell‘ PowerShell shortcut icon on your desktop and enter the following command to clone Leapcast repo to your computer.[http://windows.github.com/]

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

7. Move into Leapcast folder (cd C:\leapcast).

8. Run the setup file and install Leapcast (pip install)

Now, every time you want to emulate Chromecast on Windows 8, run Leapcast by typing:

leapcast --name MyWindows --chrome 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe' --fullscreen

See Leapcast Demo video on Windows

You can get more information about this at this source and here.