ChromeCast Presentations

SketchUp Viewer Android
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Just a note in case anyone is interested, any Android app can be presented on a projector or other large screen using a ChromeCast device.

I’ve been giving presentations for the past couple of years at multiple locations using only android devices (my android phone and tablet) and a ChromeCast dongle.

Recent os versions starting with KitKat have a “cast screen” option on the second notification pulldown and after connecting with the chromecast device, everything that happens on the android device is displayed on the device that the chromecast is connected to.

There is a learning curve and some “gotchas,” notably connecting to unfamiliar wifi systems, but, I eventually ended up using my phone as a hotspot rather than jumping through hoops to connect to wifi at the presentation locations. If anyone is interested, I will be glad to share what I have learned.

In a couple of cases, I was also able to use an HDMI to VGA adapter connected to a ChromeCast dongle to present on older projectors that had VGA but not HDMI… tip, use an HDMI to VGA adapter that requires a power supply to function.

It’s pretty amazing that you can do a high quality demo using devices that will all fit in a single pocket. It’s also surprising that you can do this using ChromeCast on a handheld device but not on a laptop :wink:

Hope that this information is helpful,
Beverly Howard

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There are a couple of ways you might be able to use ChromeCast on a laptop:

  1. Use a ChromeBook instead of a Laptop
  2. Add the ChromeCast extension to your Chrome browser. With that, you can cast any browser tab. Thus, anything you can show within a browser tab can be Cast.
1 Like
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Thanks for the response. Good information, however, I went through a
long learning process on this and learned that the key words are “can”
and “might” :wink:

Thus, anything you can show within a browser tab can be Cast. <<

That, unfortunately, essentially restricts ChromeCasting to web
content only… for example, you are not able to cast Sketchup
directly from the Sketchup software, but you are able to cast the
Android Sketchup Viewer directly from an Android device (or
ChromeBook, I assume)

There is also a secondary speed problem. Casting on a laptop from a
webpage doubles the network traffic.

The web content must first come from the network to the laptop’s
chrome browser, and then chrome re-transmits that back out to the
chromecast device via the network. In these cases, I have found that
the video smoothness is frequently degraded by this approach and is
subject to current wifi speed limits.

When casting from an android device, the content travels only from the
Android to the ChromeCast device unless the app is streaming from the
web. The Sketchup Viewer app allows models to be stored on the device
which assures that the traffic will be one way only. fwiw, during my
many Android presentations, I rarely noticed any speed issues.

In circumstances where I need to present from a laptop I learned after
a lot of attempts using the chrome browser/ChromeCast approach that
using either an HDMI or VGA cable is a much better option for a
laptop.

In those cases I use a bluetooth mouse and keyboard since it’s likely
that the need for a cable will locate the laptop somewhere
inconvenient so the BT mouse and keyboard allow me to control the
presentation from the best location for the presenter rather than the
computer.

I will however confess that at one location, there was interference
that completely disabled the use of bluetooth and I learned the hard
way to always carry a USB mouse for contingencies :wink:

Thanks again for the response,
Beverly Howard