I remember when the Chromecast first came out. It truly felt like a little magical device that allowed me to put anything I wanted on the TV. It was cool and captivating. Since then, I've used that original device for all sorts of things and I still find uses for it often.
After moving recently (and with a new Wi-Fi network), I went to set up my favorite little streaming device and found that Google no longer supports the device. As such, it isn't even possible to set it up with Google's own app.
Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), there are quite a few users out there that found the same problem. A bit of searching led me to this Reddit thread. Folks have been trying older phones, different apps, and various workarounds just to get a working device back on their network. Some things worked, some didn't. Many have given up. A shame too because the hardware still works.
A comment in that thread linked to jjdb210's guide on EMCOT which was quite helpful. They reverse-engineered the web API hosted on the device and documented the steps for configuring the Chromecast Wi-Fi without Google Home.
For convenience, I wrapped those steps into a Bash script. It gets the device's public key, finds your network, encrypts the password, and sends and saves the configuration. A little "hacking" to do something that used to be routine.
The script uses curl, jq, and openssl, and assumes you've already reset the Chromecast and connected your computer to its setup Wi-Fi. The guide covers the setup details and firmware differences; the script prompts for your network password and handles the requests from there.
I've open-sourced it on GitHub. Improvements, PRs, and input from others are always welcome. Good luck to anyone trying to do the same thing - hope this helps you. 🙂 Maybe we can keep a few more of these little devices going.
cheers -
scm