[App][Pro] Plex Media Server Playlist Caster

Plex Media Server Playlist Caster

Plays Plex Media Server playlists on Chromecast devices.
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App Store: Plex Media Server Playlist Caster
Frequently Asked Questions & Known Issues
Change Log

Supported Languages

:uk: English
:de: German

Setup

Add at least one Plex Media Server (Playlist Provider) device.
The pairing process will prompt for you Plex Account credentials if required.
Your credentials are not saved, they are used to register this app as a device in your Plex account only.

Usage

Use flowcards to control playback of your playlists on Chromecast devices of groups. Compatible cast devices are detected automatically.
The cast to device card will provide you with a full list of all playlists found on all servers you have added.

Troubleshooting

Problem: You accidently removed the Homey app from your Plex Account.
Solution: Go into app settings and manually reauthenticate your Plex Account.

Problem: You want to avoid polling Plex Servers on your account which are not reachable by Homey at all.
Solution: Go into app settings and set that server to be ignored.

Problem: A server is shown as online but the playlist count is 0.
Solution: Go into app settings and reauthenticate your Plex Account.

API

If enabled in the app settings, other apps can consume the playlist api. The api endpoints require authentication.

  • All playlists: /getPlaylists
  • Items of a playlist: /getPlaylist?playlist=[urlAsReturnedByGetPlaylists]&server=[srvValueAsReturnedByGetPlaylists]

If the request fails a json object containing the ‘error’ is returned.

Limitations

  • Can only play files which are natively supported by the targeted casting device. So no transcoding is taking place as the app is not a real Plex Player app :wink:
  • No player device in Homey UI. This is because currently it is not possible to add a playlist selector to Homey device UIs.
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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why does my login to plex fail whilst I have two factor authentication enabled?
A: This app does not support 2fa authentication but there is a simple workaround for this. See the known issues section below for details.

Q: One more servers show offline even though they are reachable, do I need to repair them?
A: No. Under some circumstances the routing to the server needs to update. Please wait 5 minutes. The connection should heal automatically and connect the server again.

Q: Why does my big playlist not start playing?
A: It does. But processing big playlists takes several seconds before the playback can be started.

Q: Next/Prev playlist does not iterate through all playlists.
A: The command iterates through playlists of the same kind only. So if you are playing a music playlist it will only cycle through music playlists. It will also use the same shuffle setting as the last playlist was started with.

Q: When casting a video playlist it does not start playing.
A: You most likely try to play a file format which is not natively supported by your cast device. Unfortunately this is a limitation of this app for the time being.

Q: When playing a playlist my Plex dashboard does not show this app doing anything.
A: This is normal. This app does not register as a playback or controller device, hence why no activity is shown in your Plex account. But it needs to reside there to have access to your Plex servers.

Q: My playlist won’t start playing, no matter how long I wait. What’s going on?
A: Yeah, this should not happen at all. However, there is a slight chance that the device you are trying to play the playlist on has an instable network connection.

Known Issues

Issue: Authentication with the plex account fails if two factor authentication is active.
Workaround: Temporarily disable the 2fa authentication in your account and authenticate the app. Your credentials are used once only, to retrieve an access token for the app for your account. You will see this app show up in your plex account’s clients list. You can safely reenable the 2fa authentication afterwards. The app stays connected to your account.

Issue: Playing to a Google TV device does not show title/track information when playback starts.
Remarks: I don’t know why this is happening. The track information is there as you can see in the Google Home app. I suspect this is a bug on Google device side.

Issue: Playlists are not loading on the action card input.
Remarks: This typically happens either if your authentication to the server was revoked, or if one of the servers you paired is offline. There is no workaround for this at the moment except for removing the offline server.

Change Log

v2.0.6

  • Fixed: App crash after removing a plex server from Homey.

v2.0.3 - v2.0.5

  • Fixed: A potential issue when parsing available servers list.
  • Fixed: New media playback trigger is no longer fired if playback is anonymized.
  • Fixed: Formatted card titles.
  • Fixed: Broken auth during server pairing.

v2.0.2

  • Fixed: Hotfix for plex server pairing issue introduced with SDKv3.

v2.0.1

  • Fixed: Hotfix for a potential app crash issue introduced with SDKv3.

v2.0.0

  • Updated: Mine types database updated.
  • Updated: App has been migrated to Homey App SDK v3.

v1.6.2

  • Fixed: Improved app stability against crashes on bad networks.

v1.6.1

  • Added: New play playlist action card with an option to play playlists anonymized. This replaces the original action card but the old cards will keep working as well.
  • Fixed: A problem where a network interruption could cause the app to crash.

v1.5.9

  • Maintenance only. No functional changes.

v1.5.8

  • Fixed: Autohealing the server connection if the server’s plex cloud ID changed

v1.5.7

  • Fixed: Potential app crash on unexpected device connection loss

v1.5.6

  • Maintenance only. No functional changes.

v1.5.5

  • Bugfix for chromecast speaker group related app crash

v1.5.3

  • Bugfix against the crash issue introduced with v1.5.2 (sorry about that)

v1.5.2

  • Improved playlist and cast device selectors

v1.5.1

  • Added support for playlists with more than 100 items
  • Fixed playlists with 1 item only not playing, they totally do now

v1.4.0

  • Added next/prev playlist option to command flowcard
  • Added a trigger flowcard to notify about a playlist being started, giving the player name and the playlist name as payload

v1.3.1

  • Maintenance update (no functional changes)

v1.3.0

  • Added playlist api for other apps to consume

v1.2.1

  • Minor fixes

v1.2.0

  • Plex Media Server as playlist provider must now be added as device explicitly

v1.0.0

  • Initial Release

Hello,

the app is not working for me.
Authorization process seemed to be completed successfully - plex server name displayed in app settings and app was added to server authorized devices.

When I try to create flow “Play PlexTV Playlist on Chromecast” there are no playlists available to select. (Chromecast devices are available properly)

When I created flow that should be triggered by “item/music/movie is playing” action, it is never triggered.

Tried repeating authorization process, reinstalling app.

App version 1.5.9
Plex Server version 1.20.2.3402

Hi @Pitlyck,
Do you mean v1.20.3.3402 maybe? (just confirming)
I will run a compatibility check and contact you directly shortly.
However, if your server is added as device then that part should be fine.

UPDATE: I can confirm that this plex server version is working just fine with the app.

A question to the general user in this forum.
Halloween is coming up and I wish to cast playlist on a projector. Everytime a new file starts the filename is casted on the screen also sort of spoiling the experience.
Is there any way I can remove the filenames beeing displayed/casted?

Hi @Mike4got,
this is an interresting idea. So I just tested what happens if the meta info is omitted when parsing the playlist and it looks like it indeed starts playing the videos in the list “anonymously”. Now I wonder if this would be a desired feature :smiley:

In short: The current app is not able to disguse what is played but it looks like it would technically be possible.

UPDATE: I added an dropdown option to the play playlist action card for anonymizing the playback. I did some basic tests and it does seem to work. However, existing flows triggered through the UI might complain about a missing parameter. They still work when started by the Flow Start card without issues though. Feel free to do some intense testing: https://homey.app/a/com.sdn.plextv-playlist-caster/test/

2 Likes

Wow, @Shakesbeard.
That was quick!!:trophy:
I will get back home tomorrow and start casting!
Thanks!

2 Likes

Hi Thomas.
It made a huge difference! Been casting the halloween :jack_o_lantern: for hours now, works like a charm. I noticed that there is a brief info casting once it changes files, a small line in the bottom of the screen together with the :arrow_forward: Button. Im super happy with the improvements and can work around the rest. Can you also see the :arrow_forward: ?
Thanks :+1::+1::+1:

Hey @Mike4got,
glad it works for your Halloweenie idea.
Yeah, that’s the playback bar, but it cannot be removed. That’s by design how the chromecast stuff works.
I am not sure whether I get around to make a final release of the app before halloween but I think you can live with the test version for now. I will later implement this feature in a better way without breaking existing flow cards.
For now, enjoy and Happy Halloweenie :smiley:

I’m experiencing the same problem.
Server is found, but my (music) playlist doesn’t show up. :-/

I can cast through the Plex app aswell, but the app in Homey won’t show my (music) playlist.
Is this app for video’s alone maybe?

I setup a Plex server on my Synology NAS because I want a flow to cast a music playlist.

Thank you in advance!

Hi @Maarten_Goutier,
no, I do host my plex server on a Synology NAS as well and use it for music primarily. The ability to cast video playlists was merily a sideproduct :wink: The app even works with plex servers located in remote locations or owned by other people which shared their library with you.

So, did you add your plex server as a device in Homey? Technically the server device acts as playlist provider for the app. If you have not paired any plex server, yet, then no playlists will show up.

Oh wauw!

You are the best!!!

Thank you for your quick response!
I did NOT add the server in Homey. This solved it. Great!

Thank you so much man!!!

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Hello i installed the app a while ago. it worked fine. Now my Server show offline. But i can acces it from other devices.

What can be the problem ?

Hi @Ronald_Bok,
this could have several reasons. Usually the app chooses the best route to connect.
Homey asks your plex account about the reachability of the server(s) in your plex account.
From the list it receives back it first checks whether the local netowork route works and if that fails it tries to use the internet route. Only if both routes fail, the server is flagged as offline.
For this to work, Homey needs to be able to contact the plex.tv domain because it needs to talk to your account.
What you can check:

  • Make sure Homey has access to the internet
  • In the Homey app go to the menu “More
” -> “Apps” -> “Plex Media Server Playlist Caster” -> “App Settings”. In there check what the status in the server list says.
  • You can also reauthenticate your plex account from there.

Finally if things are not working out. Create a diagnostic report for me for the app: menu “More
” -> “Apps” -> “Plex Media Server Playlist Caster” -> little gear icon -> Create diagnostics report. Maybe I can see in the log what is going wrong for you.

App insists that my plex login details are incorrect or plex will not accept the request
 Don’t know. Although app message is that details are incorrect. Thing is I have triple checked and what I am entering is correct. Any thoughts? Might it be that I have two factor authentication enabled in plex?

That could of course be the reason. I got no f2a support in.

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Ah well. I’m not a coder so I don’t know how difficult that is to implement. 2FA is something that I am enabling where possible

@Philip_Montgomery
The authentication only happens during app registration. You should be able to authenticate the app with your plex account by temporarily disabling 2fa. Once the app has received it’s client token from that step, it should be possible to reenable 2fa without breaking the link. Let me know if that works for you. I would add that to the FAQ then.

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Apologies for slow response, had to work :frowning: Can confirm that disabling 2FA does allow for plex to be added and that reenabling 2FA, so far at least, has not broken the link. Good to know, thanks, one for the FAQ

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