Musicbee Chromecast Plugin

[splatt]

I was able to install the addon and add the button to my toolbar with the help of a friend, but when we click the button it says "No Devices" and we aren't entirely sure why. Github is a touch above our understanding in general, we just followed the instructions as written. The status says "Chromecast Not Connected, Service Status: Not Running"

based on the settings the server should be running on 8080. When we run netstat there's no port 8080 waiting and listening. We don't find any button to turn on the server. We've tried disabling, enabling the extension, re-starting the software. We do see the rule in our firewall for allowing the chromecast communications.

The webserver doesn't need to be started manually. It will only start up once its connected to a Chromecast successfully.

Have you tried looking at the Troubleshooting part of the readme? Some google cast devices such as the home/mini/cc audio make a blip noise when something has connected to it.

Also this is how its supposed to work after connecting. Example

Most of the time it's usually a firewall/network setting thats stopping musicbee from communicating with the chromecast. It's a bit hard for me to troubleshoot things like that since peoples network setup will be different between person to person.

Thank you for the quick response! We took a look at the troubleshooting for sure, but from what we could tell it didn't seem to apply. Since the devices list says 'no devices' we can't even connect anything, so there's no way we'd hear a connection noise. Looking at the video you kindly provided, we think we have everything set up right so we'll try checking our firewall and networking settings. My friend says your reply was very helpful!

Maybe this might help but on my end this is how my inbound firewall rule is setup (I only included the relevant info):

Protocols and Ports:
   Protocol Type: TCP
   Local Port: Specific ports -> 8080
Scope:
   Local IP Address -> Any IP Address
Advanced:
   Profiles: Private

And when I do "netsh http show urlacl" I can see the required rule:

    Reserved URL            : http://*:8080/
        User: \Everyone
            Listen: Yes
            Delegate: No
            SDDL: D:(A;;GX;;;WD)

First off, Thanks again for the help. We adjusted some network settings and we've got connectivity to the chromcasts now. When we click the button on musicbee it pulls up all the options. Now the issue is that it doesn't start up the webserver. We get 2 errors the first says "The server factory could not be located for the given input: Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener." The second error is "Error starting the Webserver. Webserver Exception".

Based on the errors we thought maybe we missed the microsoft.owin.host.httplistener.dll when copying things across to the musicbee folder, but it's there.

It seems to us that it's not a networking issue any more, but an issue with me missing something or something else happening on the machine side. Network seems fine now since when we go to status it says

"Chromcast: Connected.
Server Status: Not Running"

Any other helpful tidbits that might explain what's going?

[TRoJAnV]

I was able to install the addon and add the button to my toolbar with the help of a friend, but when we click the button it says "No Devices" and we aren't entirely sure why. Github is a touch above our understanding in general, we just followed the instructions as written. The status says "Chromecast Not Connected, Service Status: Not Running"

based on the settings the server should be running on 8080. When we run netstat there's no port 8080 waiting and listening. We don't find any button to turn on the server. We've tried disabling, enabling the extension, re-starting the software. We do see the rule in our firewall for allowing the chromecast communications.

The webserver doesn't need to be started manually. It will only start up once its connected to a Chromecast successfully.

Have you tried looking at the Troubleshooting part of the readme? Some google cast devices such as the home/mini/cc audio make a blip noise when something has connected to it.

Also this is how its supposed to work after connecting. Example

Most of the time it's usually a firewall/network setting thats stopping musicbee from communicating with the chromecast. It's a bit hard for me to troubleshoot things like that since peoples network setup will be different between person to person.

Thank you for the quick response! We took a look at the troubleshooting for sure, but from what we could tell it didn't seem to apply. Since the devices list says 'no devices' we can't even connect anything, so there's no way we'd hear a connection noise. Looking at the video you kindly provided, we think we have everything set up right so we'll try checking our firewall and networking settings. My friend says your reply was very helpful!

Maybe this might help but on my end this is how my inbound firewall rule is setup (I only included the relevant info):

Protocols and Ports:
   Protocol Type: TCP
   Local Port: Specific ports -> 8080
Scope:
   Local IP Address -> Any IP Address
Advanced:
   Profiles: Private

And when I do "netsh http show urlacl" I can see the required rule:

    Reserved URL            : http://*:8080/
        User: \Everyone
            Listen: Yes
            Delegate: No
            SDDL: D:(A;;GX;;;WD)

First off, Thanks again for the help. We adjusted some network settings and we've got connectivity to the chromcasts now. When we click the button on musicbee it pulls up all the options. Now the issue is that it doesn't start up the webserver. We get 2 errors the first says "The server factory could not be located for the given input: Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener." The second error is "Error starting the Webserver. Webserver Exception".

Based on the errors we thought maybe we missed the microsoft.owin.host.httplistener.dll when copying things across to the musicbee folder, but it's there.

It seems to us that it's not a networking issue any more, but an issue with me missing something or something else happening on the machine side. Network seems fine now since when we go to status it says

"Chromcast: Connected.
Server Status: Not Running"

Any other helpful tidbits that might explain what's going?

Ok, this is something I'm gonna have to look into. I've had another person open an issue regarding this same "missing" dll in the github page even though it's present. It's weird since I had a friend independently set up the plugin to test for me and he had no issue. Placing the dll in the same folder should be the fix but for some reason it doesn't. Ill look into it, Sorry for it not working.

[TRoJAnV]

First off, Thanks again for the help. We adjusted some network settings and we've got connectivity to the chromcasts now. When we click the button on musicbee it pulls up all the options. Now the issue is that it doesn't start up the webserver. We get 2 errors the first says "The server factory could not be located for the given input: Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener." The second error is "Error starting the Webserver. Webserver Exception".

Based on the errors we thought maybe we missed the microsoft.owin.host.httplistener.dll when copying things across to the musicbee folder, but it's there.

It seems to us that it's not a networking issue any more, but an issue with me missing something or something else happening on the machine side. Network seems fine now since when we go to status it says

"Chromcast: Connected.
Server Status: Not Running"

Any other helpful tidbits that might explain what's going?

Could you try this and tell me if it fixes it for you?

Move the "Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener.dll" from the musicbee plugins folder to the musicbee main directory (i.e put the .dll where the main "MusicBee,exe" is. Up one folder). Only keep one copy of the .dll

If the above doesn't work for you, try the same as above but copy instead of move the .dll. So keep two copies.

[splatt]

Woot! We got it working and here are some lessons learned.

Lesson one this extension has issues with the windows store music be app due to not the location of extension files not being were they should be (This may be why I've had issues with other Music bee extensions Thanks for helping me out with that as I didn't know it would matter until now.)

Due to lesson one, i installed the standard x86 installer and decided to try following the normal setup to see if it was ONLY because my other music bee was the windows store app, but I had the same issues as before.

Finally I tested the provided fix and it's working. I moved the listener dll to the same folder as musicbee.exe and it is now running as expected. (I think, I'm not actually sure what "expected" is, but it mutes my computer's music bee and just plays through the chromecast. Takes a hot second to spin up, but it works and that is more than I had before.)

Thanks so much for your help. Hopefully my experience will help others too.

[TRoJAnV]

Woot! We got it working and here are some lessons learned.

Lesson one this extension has issues with the windows store music be app due to not the location of extension files not being were they should be (This may be why I've had issues with other Music bee extensions Thanks for helping me out with that as I didn't know it would matter until now.)

Due to lesson one, i installed the standard x86 installer and decided to try following the normal setup to see if it was ONLY because my other music bee was the windows store app, but I had the same issues as before.

Finally I tested the provided fix and it's working. I moved the listener dll to the same folder as musicbee.exe and it is now running as expected. (I think, I'm not actually sure what "expected" is, but it mutes my computer's music bee and just plays through the chromecast. Takes a hot second to spin up, but it works and that is more than I had before.)

Thanks so much for your help. Hopefully my experience will help others too.

Glad its working for you now! And yea, once it's connected to the chromecast it just mutes the main player since musicbee isn't outputting the audio per say; more just sending the song to the chromecast.

[RetroGameReaper]

I'm having trouble getting the plugin to work. I put the Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener.dll file where the MusicBee executable is and still nothing. I have both a Chromecast and Google Home Mini and I still get the "no devices" message when I try to connect.

[nht2]

Thanks for this plugin!  Install was super easy, had it up in mere minutes.  I really wanted a way to cast from my pc to my Apple HiFi with a Chromecast audio plugged in.

[nht2]

Something I've noticed the past few days: the plugin seems to have trouble seeing more than 8 casting devices at once. I have 11 running right now, and I find I have to repeatedly open and close the casting plugin and hope my chromecast audio pops up.

[marp68]

Hi
I had to reinstall windows and forgot some steps of the installation af the chromecast plugin. I did 1-3, but I am actually not sure if I did n. 4-5 last time. At least I don't know how to navigate in the command promt window to the files and run the .exe file.

4. Open a command prompt window and navigate to the MBCCRules folder in the extracted zip
5. Run the .exe from the command prompt passing in the port you wish to use eg. MBCCRules.exe 8080

Could someone please help out

[Terex83]

Hi all,

I was looking forward to this plugin, but it sadly doesn't work right. I can get it installed and it recognises my Chromecast on TV, no problem connecting. Server status is OK. I can browse the files which should be played using the server address in a browser. So because all of this seems to work, I'm disappointed that when I cast my tunes from musicbee, the TV only displays some information of the track but does not display any album art and no sound is coming out from my speakers on my TV. I can't figure out why the music is not coming through...

[Winston]

I am unable to get the chromecast pluggin to find my Chromecast Audio on my network. Google Chrome browser on the same PC finds my Chromecast Audio and plays music from a radio station that I cast to it. I have setup the plugin per the instructions and the trouble shooting guide, confirmed the settings, tried moving the dll to the MusicBee directory, even uninstalled and installed MusicBee, but no matter what I do when I click on Chromecast in MusicBee I get the "No Devices" dialog. Any guidance or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

[cjh6gc]

If anyone is trying to get this to work with the store app, it can be done! It's a little complicated though.

Since Windows essentially bars you from modifying anything in the WindowsApps folder (where Windows Store apps are installed), you're going to have to do your work outside of Windows. I used Ubuntu Live on a flash drive, but there are numerous other ways you can do it.

• Rather than copying the plugin's files into MusicBee's folder (which Windows won't let you do), save them elsewhere and then add them in MusicBee under Edit Preferences > Plugins > Add Plugin.
• Per some other users, you may also need to install the MusicBee UPnP/DLNA server plugin. I didn't try this without it.
• Follow the instructions here to create install Ubuntu Live on a flash drive.
• Make note of (1) where you have Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener.dll saved and (2) the parent directory of musicbee.exe. You can find musicbee.exe's parent folder by right-clicking on it in Task Manager and selecting "Open file location".
• Shut down your computer and boot Ubuntu Live from the flash drive. You may need to modify your UEFI/BIOS settings to get it to boot from the flash drive instead of booting your Windows installation.
• Select Ubuntu in the first menu AFTER you've booted from the flash drive.
• On the next menu, choose to boot from the drive rather than installing Ubuntu.
• Now you should finally be into the Ubuntu desktop. Open the file manager and copy the .dll from wherever you saved it to both the same directory as musicbee.exe AND the plugins directory. I'm not sure if you need both, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
• Shut down Ubuntu and reboot into Windows.

If your drive is encrypted with Bitlocker (like mine), you'll need to follow a few more steps.
BEFORE booting into Ubuntu.

• Save your recovery key by right-clicking on the encrypted drive (in Windows) and selecting "Manage Bitlocker", then "Backup your recover key".
  
• You can either save it to a text file or to your Microsoft account. In either case, it's a long set of numbers (8 sets of 6, with dashes in between).

AFTER booting into Ubuntu.

• Open software center, click on edit, and the software sources. Then check the box that says "Community-maintained free and open-source software (universe)".
  
• Follow the instructions here to unlock and mount your drive. Where it says to type in your password as "-u<password>", use "-p<recovery key>" instead, where you replace "<recovery key>" with the long number you saved before, INCLUDING the dashes, and making sure there is NOT a space between "-p" and the beginning of your recovery key.
• Copy the .dll as described above.

While modifying files in the Ubuntu environment, you should be careful to not modify anything else, because you could corrupt your MusicBee or worse, Windows installation.

[psychoadept]

That seems like a lot of work when you could just switch to the portable version, but cool to know if can be done. Would this work for any plug-in?

[marp68]

Have installed the x86 program instead of windows app. Created the firewall rule through the .exe file and cmd prompt. Created button.

When I click the button my chromecast is visible in the list. But when clicking it I get two error message  following each other: first "Ett undatagsfel har inträffat i målet för en aktivering" (more or less, "an error exception has ocurred an the target for an activation") and then the message "Error starting the webserver. Webserver exception".

I tried both copy the .dll to the MB folder and then two copies in both the MB folder and the plugin folder. No results.

What am I doing wrong? Why doesn't the server starts?

PLease help. I managed to use the plugin before, but did a complete reinstallation of windows when changing my HDD to a SDD.

[cjh6gc]

That seems like a lot of work when you could just switch to the portable version, but cool to know if can be done. Would this work for any plug-in?

Definitely a lot of work, and I thought about switching, but I appreciate that Windows handles the updates for me and I didn't want to mess with trying to copy all my settings and preferences over. Maybe that's easier than I thought.

I suppose this should work for any plugin, but using the "Add Plugin" option in under Edit Preferences > Plugins has worked for everything else I've thrown at it. I think this one is unique because we're not actually adding Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener.dll to MusicBee, but just putting it in the folder that this Chromecast expects it to be in. There might be a way to update the plugin to look for that .dll in a different folder that's easier to access.