The idea is to replicate what chromecast can do in regards to screen mirroring and streaming media to a remote display. Google chromes screen mirroring feature works well when used with a receiver such as chromecast but this is a proprietary solution and audio does not work for desktop mirroring on some operating systems.

This application is ideal for wireless projection, no more cables, just send your desktop or media over the network to a receiver

At the moment, there is only a client for Debian/Ubuntu Operating systems. There is a server/receiver application for raspberry pi

Mirrorcast aims to be a low latency screen mirroring solution with high quality video and audio at 25-30fps, the later is why we will not use something like VNC.

Mirrorcast uses up about the same amount of system resources as google chromes cast feature. The delay is less than 1 second on most networks.

To acheive this we will use existing FOSS software such as ffmpeg, ffplay, VLC player and omxplayer

DEBIAN/UBUNTU APPLET

The debian/ubuntu app is working but could do with improvements

• Automate audio settings(This is partially done, you might need to modify some code to automate audio settings for some computers)
• Add option mirror selected application (Using Xlib and composite(redirect and pixmap) so that applications will still mirror if covered by another window, resized or minimised)
• Tidy up code (Find simplier and more pythonic solutions where possible)

Other (If you want to help out with creating a client for the following then that would be great)

• Create Windows client application
• Create MacOs client application
• Create Android client application

Currently this is a rough prototype that I have only tested on computers running Ubuntu 16.04 and Lubuntu and a raspberry pi as the receiver. The applet will add a option to start mirroring the selected display to the selected receiver. It has been deployed at a High School where it is used so the teachers can use the projectors without wires.

To install the mirrorcast client on debian/ubuntu

• download the latest mirrorcast deb file from releases
• Install it
• sudo dpkg -i mirrorcast_version_number.deb
• if you are missing dependencies install them with
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -f install
• add/edit the hostnames or ip addresses of your receivers to /opt/mirrorcast/receivers (if the receiver is widescreen then put '16:9' as the aspect)

Using the raspberry pi receiver

• install omxplayer, youtube-dl and python-omxplayer-wrapper (make sure you install omxplayer-wrapper for using python3 and not 2.7 and get the latest youtube-dl from git instead of using the one in the repository)
• download mirrorcast_server_pi.py and omx.py from the server folder or just clone the whole repo
• add the following to /etc/rc.local
• python3 /path/to/mirrorcast_server_pi.py

By default the mirrorcast server uses udp port 8090 and tcp port 8092. If the client wants to stream DVD's and Media, then TCP port 8090 needs to be open on the client side.

To start mirroring your desktop, start the mirrorcast application, it will add an applet to your toolbar, first select the display you want to mirror(if you have more than one), then select your receiver, then click 'start mirroring'

NOTE: This is a work in progress, the code is rushed, messy and not at all elegant at this stage.