How to test Chromecast apps without a TV?

Question

Background

I'm planning to make an app that casts things (urls, content,...) to chromecast .

I've bought a ChromeCast dongle, and it worked fine using the samples of Google.

The problem

It's quite annoying to have 3 screens to look at while developing such apps, and I'd prefer to have the receiver on the PC side too.

Such a thing would also make it much easier to debug and test.

What I've tried

I've searched for this a lot, and found some Chrome plugins (like CR Cast), but they all have terrible bugs. I've even found a python based solution (here), but I failed to compile it.

I've noticed that there is a reciever side description of ChromeCast in the documentation. Does this have anything to do with a replacement of ChromeCast?

The question

I'd like to know if it's possible to do the testing on the computer itself, including all of the features that ChromeCast has.

Answer 1

Unfortunately there is no replacement for testing a Chromecast other then testing on a Chromecast been developing on CC for 3 years... (If someone knows how please enlighten me).

The receiver web application that is run on the CC references Google JS libraries that are dependent specifically on CC hardware and must run on the devices builtin browser.

I've been in the similar situation where while traveling I had no access to a TV and needed to fix a CC issue. In this case I would recommend just plugging the CC into USB (to power it) and leave the display out of it. The CC has no dependency on being plugged into a display to function and it will operate, stream, log events just the same. Then just access its remote debugger on the CC's IP address and port 9222. Every log regarding its operation will be there and you can inspect the HTML (But you probably know this).