Will there be Chromecast Receiver Emulator or an alternate app that acts as a receiver for development?
Solution 1:
Update: Our latest effort is a complete chromecast v2 receiver, called YouMap Chromecast Receiver, works very well on Android devices, including FireTV: http://forum.xda-developers.com/hardware-hacking/chromecast/app-youmap-chromecast-receiver-android-t3161851
We just released a chromecast emulator on iOS, freely available from App Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rplay/id692511073?mt=8
Spent a few days to emulate Chromecast inside rPlay, finally it can find the rPlay (on Raspberry Pi) as a chromecast device, and it can send youtube URL redirection. still long way to go, but seems possible.
Attached is a screenshot of Youtube on Nexus 7, the Chromecast button is shown, when clicked, it will show rPlay as the device.
More info on rPlay: http://www.vmlite.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=158&func=view&catid=23&id=10991
We will release chromecast emulators for windows/Linux/Mac/android/iOS in September.
Solution 2:
This project is in early development. Youtube works, at least.
https://github.com/dz0ny/leapcast
Solution 3:
There doesn't appear to be one provided, but it should be possible, perhaps as a Chrome extension.
Fun facts: a ChromeCast compatible receiver would need to respond to DIAL Service Discovery requests sent via SSDP. Assuming it identified itself correctly and responded to DIAL commands, it would also need to open a WebSocket and respond to commands sent from the sender which are serialized JSON arrays containing the application namespace string and an application-specific JSON object as the first and second array elements. The receiver would at minimum only need to respond to two application namespaces ("cm" and "ramp" for the MediaProtocolCommand) in order to be compatible with the SDKs.