[IN DEVELOPMENT] Homey DLNA

Currently, I am developing a new app that adds support for DLNA certified devices. The first alpha version will have support for streaming music/video/photo to a paired device.

At the moment I am working on the foundation of this app but I am hoping to deliver a first alpha version soon. If someone is interested in doing some testing once this alpha version is released please let me know.

Warm regards,

Jeroen van Reenen

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Progress v0.0.1 alpha:

Discovery
Pair device with homey
Play audio/video/picture on device
Send DIDL-lite metadata
Homey action cards
Implement connection manager
Implement http proxy to add response headers
Cleanup code
Test and fix bugs
Ship alpha release

[RESERVED for future use 2]

How should I see this app working?
You can tell homey to start a video from a DNA-device you first added to Homey?

On its first iteration it should allow you to cast a picture/video/music file to a device. The action card needs a URL containing the file you want to cast.

Later I want to extend it with

  • browsing a media server
  • volume control
  • triggers if a device starts/stops playing something
    etc…

I am open for any suggestion, although I cannot guarantee it will end up in this app :wink:

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Super! :+1:

Actually I never understood why this is not core functionality of Homey.

Would it also be possible to sream audio from a youtube channel to my sonos? :kissing_heart:

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@Gruijter Maybe if you combine it with https://apps.athom.com/app/com.youtube I will see what I can do.

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Very close to release an alpha version, hopefully today.

2 Likes

I’m intrigued by your app, is there any chance you could give us an example or two on how this could be used?

In the first iteration you can think of cases like:

  • Your doorbell application detects the doorbell is pressed grabs the picture and this app can cast it to a paired TV
  • A podcast application reports that there is a new episode of your favorite podcast, this application can cast it to a paired speaker.
  • A video streaming app reports a new video is available, this application can cast it to a paired TV.

Any app that can provide this app a url to a photo/video/audio file can be combined with paired devices, off course the device must have support for the media file encoding.

In later iterations I plan to implement

  • Browse DLNA media servers and cast content to a paired device.
  • Trigger cards when a paired device starts playing new content.
  • Control volume of paired devices.

I am open for suggestions, although no guarantee it will end up in this app :wink:

3 Likes

Taking a bit longer I decided to implement DIDL-lite metadata in this first iteration to better support some devices that need this information to play a media file. Being lazy and not implementing this now would reduce the number of supported devices.

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A pre-alpha release can be installed using cli install

Known issues

  • Philips TV isn’t working, probably due to a missing implementation of the connection manager. Probably more devices are facing the same problem.
  • Volume isn’t implemented
  • Device discovery might take several minutes
  • There is no validation (yet) on supported content types on a device, offering an unsupported content type might cause unexpected behavior.
  • If a paired device isn’t yet discovered triggering a flow action will crash the app

WARNING

This application is far from stable state, you probably have to re-pair devices on every version update.

Bug reporting
If you want to help testing please report found bugs here. Please be as detailed as possible while reporting a bug, this helps on solving them :wink:

Thanks!

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Seems that a few TV’s don’t like to serve external streams that doesn’t provide a Content-Length in their response header. Will do some experiments with a simple proxy implementation that does provide this. Scope is increasing by the day :wink: But its for a good cause.

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Don’t know much about DLNA, more than my (old) receiver’s got the function. Is/will it be possible to turn the receiver on with a card in this app, or does it have to be on to be able to stream media?

@jreenen

Any news?

@jreenen Does this mean i control my Heos speaker with homey to play a spotify playlist? Because Homey Athom abaddon the official app Heos AP since 2017.

Like this idea?

No, Spotify over dlna will not be possible. dlna only does mp3, wav etc… No closed protocols like Spotify…

Dammit, back to asking Homey to proper update the Heos app. Thanks @bvdbos for explaining

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@Tolga @all Since moving to a new house took some more time than I was expecting and the fact that I needed to (partially) rewrite the Harmony Hub app this app wasn’t actively worked on. I am planning to pick this up by the end of this week.

@jreenen,

Hi, no stress, big thanks for your HARD work and take your time!