Manually add a chromecast device by IP

Configuration
1

I have a home assistant instance that has been running some automations between two physical locations with a VPN linking the two sites. Chromecast auto-discovery does not work for chromecasts at the remote site. I used to be able to manually add these by IP address in my configuration.yaml - but this appears to be no longer supported. Does anyone know a workaround to either manually add a chromecast by IP, or get autodiscovery working over a VPN?

In case it helps, the VPN server is on a 192.168.1.0 subnet and the home assistant instance is at a different site on the 192.168.2.0 subnet. The VPN internally uses 10.8.0.0 subnet, but I have static routes set up at each location.

I do have avahi-daemon on the VPN server with enable-reflector=yes - which from my distant memory was something that once-upon-a-time enabled me to see chromecasts through the VPN … but it doesn’t seem to work now.

2
3

So the mDNS forwarding part should be what avahi-daemon manages. I have no idea how to do this part: “Enable source NAT to make requests from Home Assistant to the Chromecast appear to come from the same subnet as the Chromecast.”

4

Nor do I! I was just pointing out something I had read…

5

After some more thinking I’ve decided I’ll just run another instance of home assistant at the remote site and link automations between sites where needed with mqtt.

1 Like