Google’s Chromecast was first released in 2013, with a more sophisticated follow-up in 2015, which saw itself joined by the Chromecast Audio dongle. The device went through an additional two hardware generations before the entire line of products was discontinued earlier this year in favor of Google TV.
In addition to collecting each generation of Chromecast, [Brian Dipert] over at EDN looked back on this second-generation dongle from 2015 while also digging into the guts of a well-used example that got picked up used.
While not having any of the fascinating legacy features of the 2nd-generation Ultra in his collection that came with the Stadia gaming controller, it defines basically everything that Chromecast dongles were about: a simple dongle with a HDMI & USB connector that you plugged into a display that you wanted to show streaming content on. The teardown is mostly similar to the 2015-era teardown by iFixit, who incidentally decided not to assign any repairability score, for obvious reasons.
Most interesting about this second-generation Chromecast is that the hardware supported Bluetooth, but that this wasn’t enabled until a few years later, presumably to fix the wonky new device setup procedure that would be replaced with a new procedure via the Google Home app.
While Google’s attention has moved on to newer devices, the Chromecast isn’t dead — the dongles in the wild still work, and the protocol is supported by Google TV and many ‘smart’ appliances including TVs and multimedia receivers.
Still use mine to this day and still find it better than roku
I have a 1st Gen and 2nd Gen that I still use.
Mine stutters now, I suspect it over heats and intend to pop it open to add a passive heatsink and cutout the plastic.
I’ve not looked into that at all but its struggling so will risk it. And raw dog the task rather than look up what it’s like on the inside.
I have a 1st Gen, support is starting to be dropped. Now TV openly states “casting is no longer supported by this device” and Disney + no longer works but gives no error message why.
I have a few around the house; the ones I use the most are the audio ones: super handy to get my nice receiver and a couple mini-systems to play audio from Plex, Spotify, etc.
Good idea. I was thinking of upgrading one of my TVs which would retire one of mine. Audio would make good use of it.
I’ve got a first gen, three 2nd gen and two audios.
They all serve a useful purpose, but I’m certain at some point they will just be added to the killedbygoogle.com list.
That will be a sad day.
I’m sad to hear they discontinued it. We use them in our house and almost exclusively everything we watch is through them. I just didn’t know about the discontinuation because… every tv in our home has one so why would I be shopping for more?
In our house we prefer the older Chromecasts. The newer ones just try to be ‘too much’ with their own independent volume controls and all the built in apps. We just want to cast to it, nothing more, nothing less.
Chromecast is (was?) the only ‘smarts’ I need in a display. Put them on a firewalled subnet, set up mdns reflection and you’re done. No need for a bazillion apps on the display, you already have them on your mobile.
I’d really hate to buy Roku/fire/other set top or dongle, and am for sure never purchasing a ‘smart’ tv.
Does anyone know of a halfway decent open source alternative? I have a pile of raspis and decommissioned corporate laptops, so putting compute at the display is not the issue, I just want the ease and os compatibility of the chromecast
There is a thing called raspicast for the raspi so you can turn the raspberry pi into a Chromecast
Not quite the same as it requires an app, so no standard cast button (please do correct me if I’m wrong)
Firewalled eh?
I once used it down my rugby club to stream to a TV from my laptop. I had to set up a wifi hotspot to get it all working. Only later did I realise that it had also streamed the entire video to google! And used up all my data!
I ended up replacing my chromecasts a number of years ago with roku. I needed locally installed apps for when power outages, more importantly ISP outages wouldn’t allow me to cast. My understanding is that the apps are ephemeral and get pulled down from the cloud each time. My media is offline, my playback should be too!
My Chromecast dongle disappeared in our recent house move, never to be found (I found the shirt yellow 3.5mm jack to optical cable, but nothing else!). Replaced with a WiiM pro, seems to do a great job, also compatible with Spotify, Bluetooth etc.
I’ve always loved the “wireless hdmi like” nature of it. No extra apps, no extra remotes, just the standard “cast” button on multimedia apps.
Beautiful concept.
I love hitting cast and it turns the TV on and sets it to HDMI3.
But, let’s face it, most of the people we know don’t get it do they?
“Where’s the Remote? How do I go to netflix?”