Looks like I just found a decent solution.
CASTBRIDGE
It was pretty easy to install the plugin right inside the Logitech Media Server (settings) add-ons.
Took me a few minutes, as I have never used the add-on tab before, and didn't want to mess anything up.
The only downfall I see is... Since the LMS program, does not recognize the Chromecast unit as an actual Squeezebox unit, it will not let me use Squeeze Control or CTRL to stream Pandora to the Chromecast at all. It gives me an error saying that I need to have a paid Pandora account to use this feature. Of course I do have a paid account, but since Logitech does not have the Chromecast unit in my list of registered Squeezebox devices, It's not letting me stream to it.
So, still no all-in-one solution yet....
If anyone is interested, CastBridge is as simple as turning on a checkbox inside LMS
forums.slimdevices.c o m/showthread.php?104614-Announce-CastBridge-integrate-Chromecast-players-with-LMS-(squeeze2cast)&highlight=castbridge
Squeeze2Cast – Chromecast bridge - User Guide
1 Introduction
1.1 What Is It?
This program (squeeze2cast - sq2c for short) allows Chromecast renderers to be used and controlled from LMS as regular squeezebox devices. It acts as a proxy between LMS and Chromecast renderers. It scans the local network for renderers and creates an instance of an LMS software player for each renderer found.
It can run on any computer running Windows or Linux. OSX and ARM versions may also be available. For speed reasons, it is better to be co-located with LMS, but this is not essential.
1.2 How it Works
Sq2c receives commands and audio streams from LMS. All commands sent by LMS are transformed into Chromecast commands. Timing (position) information is taken every second from the Chromecast renderer so the LMS cursor might go back and forth a bit as LMS first tries to guess the position and then “match” it with what it receives.
Audio streams are buffered and forwarded to the Chromecast renderer, without changing the audio coding format except for pcm where a bit of sample re-arranging can be done. For buffering it creates two local files, which can be as large as the original files sent by LMS (there are ways of limiting the size of these files if required).
Gapless, Smart Transition (fading in and out) and multi-player synchronisation are not available. ReplayGain partially work if pcm audio is sent by LMS (see note below)
README on volume management: Chromecast devices have the notion of “media session” which is a unique session established per each track playback. The Chromecast volume can be controlled either globally, or per “media session”. These are independent volume levels and the actual volume is the combination of the two. The solution used by sq2c is to use the global volume so that a change of volume made from another controller (eg. The Android or iOS apps) can be reflected in LMS. In case the volume is too loud across the LMS range, it is possible to scale it through the “media session” volume using the parameter <media_volume>
README on firewall: The application squeeze2cast-xxx (where xxx depends on the platform) must be allowed to go through the firewall of the machine it runs onto. It opens a port (usually 49152, but that can be configured with <upnp_socket> option. In Windows, set an entry for squeeze2cast-win in the control panel. On other machine, have a look at your firewall settings.
2 Chromecast bridge Plugin
The simplest way to use sq2c is to install the “Chromecast bridge” plugin on the system running LMS. If this is not practical and you need to install it on another computer, see Section 3 below.
2.1 First Steps
i. Go to the Settings, Plugins page on the LMS GUI.
ii. Go to 'Additional Repositories' near the bottom. If this is not available, there should be an option to enable third party plugins. Tick this, and press 'Apply' at bottom right.
iii. Add the following line to the list of additional repositories:
sourceforge.n e t/projects/lms-plugins-philippe44/files/repo-sf.xml
Restart LMS.
iv. You should now find that there is a section called “Philippe's squeezecenter plugins” listing the Chromecast plugin Tick this to make it available on the next LMS restart, and restart LMS.
v. Go to the Settings, Advanced page on the LMS GUI and select the Chromecast bridge entry.
vi. Turn on all your Chromecast devices.
Tick the ’Start the Bridge’ tickbox, choose the executable for your platform if more than one is available and tick ‘Apply’ at the right-bottom of the page. As the ‘autosave’ option is ticked by default, a configuration will be generated automatically after ~30s, just wait and refresh the page to see it. You can optionally force configuration file generation by ticking ‘Generate’.
From that point, you might be lucky and have sq2c and your players working with all built-in defaults, but it is highly recommended to follow the steps below once you have a configuration file created.
vii. Make sure the ‘Start the Bridge’ tickbox is unticked
viii. Edit the parameters if you need to (you can, for example, change the name of the player).
ix. Save these values and restart the plugin by ticking the 'Start the Bridge' tickbox and press 'Apply'.
x. The parameters on the plugin settings screen include most of those in the configuration file. See Section 5 for details of each configuration file parameter. You can edit the configuration file manually if you really need to.
xi. If you get stuck, read Section 4 which may help you to choose different options.
When ‘autosave’ is ticked, the configuration will be saved with an updated list of players at each network scan (see scanning option to change period). It is also possible to manually update your configuration file at any time by ticking ‘Generate’ (whether ‘Start the Bridge’ is ticked or not).
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