Can AutoCast make Chromecast amazing?

Whilst Chromecast has a hell of a lot of potential to be an incredible device in the future, at the moment the options are rather limited: only a handful of apps support Google’s dongle… isn’t there so much more it can do? This is where AutoCast can step in.

The brainchild of developer João Dias, AutoCast is essentially a platform built on a platform (arguably built on another platform – it is a plugin for Android’s popular ‘Tasker’ app). Once installed on to your Android phone, you can customise it by installing different “screens”, enabling all sorts of interesting functionality. Watch this video for a thorough demonstration:

As you can see – it can do a lot. What I like best is the integration with phone stuff – so throwing up notifications from your phone as an overlay on whatever you’re watching. There’s also voice-controlled YouTube casting and crucially, scope for plugging the app into whatever other apps you can figure out.

What’s really interesting about AutoCast and Tasker is that they provide a (relatively) straightforward open platform on which interactions can be built – a bit like how the website Ifttt.com can connect up your Google Calendar to your Facebook, or your Instagram to your toaster, AutoCast could make Chromecast display all sorts of useful information. For example – it’d be relatively easy to build a “dashboard” type display for all of the information you may need in a morning.

Perhaps the most useful immediate implementation though is the ability to Cast video that you’ve filmed yourself on your phone – rathe than having to upload it to YouTube first. Here’s Dias explaining how to set it up in AutoCast.

If you’re an Android user, why not give AutoCast a try and let us know what you think in the comments?