It’s no news that I’ve put together quite some time ago a spare desktop to use as media center. No wonder also that it runs XBMCbuntu quite smoothly. 🙂 It’s also VERY nice to be able to control the whole media experience through any browser or Android device that’s in the same network, so I can put it to play media without even looking at it.

The last couple of weeks (after ChromeCast launch), I saw many many applications attemping to integrate with (despite the unstable API) and even completely emulate it! So, since I don’t have access to one of these HDMI-dongle wonders, I’ve decided to put LeapCast to work and emulate my own ChromeCast setup! 🙂

First of all, it needs a Linux setup that runs google-chrome, which the current XBMCbuntu… doesn’t. In fact, even if a simple call to update-manager (and a bit of patience) did the trick, I still had plenty of NVidia driver madness to control after the reboot (so, if you’re not up to trouble, install an up-to-date Ubuntu and XBMC from it).

Installed LeapCast and Chrome, created a simple shell script to be able to log and called it from a nifty system function at ~/.xbmc/userdata/autoexec.py. Worked like a charm (despite calling LeapCast with –fullscreen, it’s not using it all. Perhaps the X calls are a bit odd from XBMC…) and the device advertised itself once I opened the Youtube app at my Nexus phone. 🙂

Of course XBMC has its own Youtube addon, which works wonders and I love it very much, this results in even less exercise. 😀 Ready to become the couch zombie we all aspire to!