Make your own Chromecast Audio
Never throw away a good Android phone. Darren Yates explains how to repurpose it into a cheap Chromecast Audio clone.
In last month’s Android Masterclass, we looked at how you can take your Android audio to the next level, and as a result of renewed focus by almost every vendor from Google down, the beats you listen to are steadily improving. Yet, while Bluetooth audio is receiving plenty of new love, thanks to Qualcomm and Sony, you might still find it easier to stream your audio via Wi-Fi and devices like Google’s Chromecast Audio dongle. However, if you have an old Android phone holding up a shelf, here’s a chance to dust it off and make your own Chromecast Audio clone. And no, you won’t need root-access, either.
BUDGET BUYS
I have a thing for budget prepaid Android phones, but to limit myself, the rule is I only buy one if it’s cheaper than the last budget phone I bought. This started with an Alcatel Pixi 3 4.5 for $34.50, then a prepaid Boost Indy (ZTE B816) for just $19. They’re not world-beaters, sure, but to me, they’re not phones — they’re multi-core battery-powered touch-screen computers for basically the price of an evening meal.
That $34.50 phone came with Lollipop/Android 5.1 and quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, which gives it plenty of Android API (application programming interface) value and loads of horsepower to work with. In other words, check your drawers — you’ll likely have an Android phone lying around that could be as good, if not better. As long as your device has at least Android 4.4, you’ve got the makings of your own Wi-Fi player.
HARDWARE SETUP
The method we’re using this month is to stream music files stored on your everyday phone over your home Wi-Fi network to your ‘Chromecast Audio clone’ phone. Plug a set of computer speakers or your home Hi-Fi system into your clone phone’s headphone socket and you’re good to go. As simple as it sounds, this method has a few benefits. First, it doesn’t assume you
have a home media server (although it can be made to work with one if available). Second, it doesn’t rely on your clone phone having any worthwhile storage — even if it’s only 4GB of internal flash, its fine (that’s because your clone phone is simply playing the audio data streaming to it from your everyday phone). Third, there’s no Bluetooth involved — that means no low-end sub-band coding (SBC) compression. Instead, our method will play not only MP3 files, but uncompressed WAV and losslesscompression FLAC audio as well.
SOFTWARE SETUP
To glue this all together, you’ll need two apps from Google Play, and neither of them requires root access. On your everyday phone, install ‘Hi-Fi Cast + DLNA’ (we’ll just call it ‘Hi-Fi Cast’ from now on). This is a nice clean audio player that can also stream audio wirelessly to DLNA music playback devices or ‘renderers’. If you have a Hi-Fi DLNA player from the likes of Yamaha, Denon or Onkyo, the Hi-Fi Cast app should locate it and be able to stream your music straight to it. If you don’t have one of these, that’s where Google’s Chromecast Audio dongle would normally slot in, but instead, it’s where we’re plugging in your old Android phone.
Speaking of which, grab your old phone, head to Google Play and install ‘BubbleUPnP for DLNA/Chromecast’. This app is similar to Hi-Fi Cast, except it also has a built-in DLNA stream player or renderer — it’s this feature that turns your phone into a Wi-Fi player.
SETTING UP YOUR CLONE PHONE
Once you’ve installed BubbleUPnP, launch it — and that’s about it. You’ll obviously have to boot your clone phone onto your home Wi-Fi network, adjust the audio output level and ensure your speaker system is set up, ready to go. But otherwise, BubbleUPnP will do the rest. One thing, though — the free version only gives you 30 minutes of DLNA rendering love, so test it out, if it works for you, buy the licence for about $7 or so. The only other thing you may need to do is just open up the BubbleUPnP Settings menu, select ‘Local Renderer’ and see that the ‘Allow remote control’ checkbox is ticked. It should be but check it anyway.
SETTING UP YOUR EVERYDAY PHONE
Now you go back to your everyday phone and launch ‘Hi-Fi Cast’. Allow the app access to your local files, then, when the main app window appears, tap the hamburger side-menu button on the top-left of the screen and choose ‘Playback Devices’. If your clone phone is powered up and BubbleUPnP is sitting, ready and waiting, you should see the BubbleUPnP entry appear. Tap the entry and you’re done. Now, just go back a screen and move through your songs on Hi-Fi Cast’s album list, select a song to play and the dulcet tones should begin emanating from your sound system in a few seconds.
Once BubbleUPnP is running, you can turn off the clone phone screen and it should be fine. And as a nice touch, go into BubbleUPnP’s Settings menu to Control, tap ‘Start on boot’ and the app will automatically launch as soon as your clone phone boots.
TROUBLESHOOTING
Provided your clone phone has at least KitKat/Android 4.4, technically you should be able to use a device with just a dual-core Cortex-A7 CPU. While measuring CPU usage with CPU-Z (also on Google Play) on our test dual-core ZTE B816, the CPU regularly switched off one of its two cores and coasted along at around 10% usage. However, every now and then, we’d get occasional audio dropouts — BubbleUPnP suggests the solution is to switch off the ‘Handle audio focus’ setting just below the ‘Allow remote control’ checkbox. It didn’t help us. However, the $34.50 Alcatel Pixi 3 4.5 phone with its quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU running as the clone phone didn’t miss a beat. Try turning off any auto-sync feature in Android if you’re getting glitches on a dual-core phone.
RECLAIM AND REUSE
It might surprise you but the hardware inside many of your favourite home tech gadgets is pretty similar — an ARM phone-grade Cortex-A class processor, some RAM, some flash storage, a bit of network access along with its purpose-built input and output features. Rather than contributing your old devices to land-fill, gain skills by learning how to reuse your tech. It might not always be easy, sometimes it might not even be possible, but chances are your old tech can still do more than you might expect.