CastBot

A Telegram Bot to stream contents (Telegram videos, Youtube videos and more) to your smart TV

Demonstration video

Feature

• Stream Telegram videos to any device that supports UPnP (AVTransport), Chromecast, Vlc (telnet api), Kodi (xbmc http api)
• Web interface that plays videos in your browser
• Download videos by URLs and stream to devices

Known issues

• Chromecast (1st, 2nd and 3rd Gen.) only supports H.264 and VP8 video codecs
• Most LG TVs with WebOS have an incorrect UPnP implementation
• This bot supports videos of ~4.5Mb/s bit rate at maximum. The videos of higher bit rate would keep freezing.

How to run castbot with pip

Create a configuration file config.toml and then run the following command

pip install castbot
castbot -c config.toml -v 1

Note: Make sure you have a version of Python 3.8+

How to run castbot with Docker

Create a configuration file config.toml and then run the following command

docker run --network host -v "$(pwd)/config.toml:/app/config.toml:ro" -d ghcr.io/zhongkechen/castbot:master

How to config

Create a file config.toml with the following content

[downloader]
# Use yt-dlp or you-get to download Youtube videos
downloader = "yt-dlp"

# how many concurrent downloads
concurrency = 10

[bot]

# `api_id` and `api_hash` can be generated here: https://core.telegram.org/api/obtaining_api_id
api_id=652324
api_hash="eb06d4abfb49dc3eeb1aeb9f581e"

# `token` can be created from https://telegram.me/BotFather
token="xxxxxxxxx"

# `session_name` can be an arbitary string.
session_name="castbot"

# Only users in this `admins` list can use this bot. 
# Your own user id can be found here https://telegram.me/getuseridbot
admins=[337885031,32432424,44353421]

[http]

# The IP address or the hostname of the host running castbot
listen_host = "192.168.1.2"

# An arbitary port that is not in use
listen_port = 8350


# The following devices sections are optional. Add the sections you need.

[[devices]]
# When this section is added, all the UPNP devices in the local network will be auto-discovered.
# For Kodi, UPNP must be enabled in Settings -> Services -> UPNP/DLNA
# https://kodi.wiki/view/Settings/Services/UPnP_DLNA
type="upnp"

[[devices]]
# When this section is added, all the ChromeCast devices in the local network will be auto-discovered.
type="chromecast"

[[devices]]
# When this section is added, open http://`listen_host`:`listen_port`/static/index.html in a browser.
# Now if you send a video to the bot, you can choose to play it in the browser
type="web"
password="changeit"

[[devices]]
# When this section is added, we can play video on a device running VLC.
# VLC Telnet interface must be enabled.
type="vlc"
host = "127.0.0.1"
port = 4212
password = "123"

[[devices]]
# When UPNP is blocked by firewall, we can use this section to connect to Kodi.
# Remote Control of Kodi must be enabled: Settings -> Services -> Control.
# https://kodi.wiki/view/Settings/Services/Control
type="xbmc"
host = "192.168.42.140"
port = 8080
username = ""
password = ""