Marquee

Marquee turns a Google Nest Hub into a clean Plex now-playing display. It shows artwork, title, plot, genres, ratings, media details, progress, and a clock, then returns the Hub to ambient mode when playback stops.

Same app, nine looks: six templates × eight themes × six fonts × any accent color.

With your own library it looks like this — real posters, backdrops, and clear-logos straight from Plex:

Templates

Six designed layouts, switchable live from the settings page:

Spotlight — poster beside the full metadata stack	Hero — big centered title over the backdrop
Lower Third — broadcast-style chyron over full-bleed art	Big Clock — ambient timepiece with a now-playing strip
Street — a living night scene: your poster in a bulb-lit marquee, the movie logo sprayed on brick	Split — hard split: full-height art wall beside the info column

Every template is built from the same blocks — title/logo identity, grouped ratings, metadata chips, plot, progress, clock, poster — so your show/hide toggles, themes, custom accent color, and block position tweaks carry across all of them.

Features

• Live Plex now-playing card with six designed templates: Spotlight, Split, Hero, Lower Third, Big Clock, and Street (animated marquee bulbs and all).
• Eight themes, one-tap Vibe presets, a custom accent color, five title fonts, 12/24-hour clock styles, and per-block show/hide toggles.
• Session filters: limit casting to your Plex users and your devices, live from the settings page — shared users no longer take over the display.
• A drag-and-slider editor for moving, sizing, justifying, and scaling each card block, with an instant demo preview featuring original fictional films (no copyrighted art).
• Persisted settings, health checks, and a Docker-first deployment path.
• Google Nest Hub casting with clean idle handoff back to ambient mode.

What You Need

• Docker
• Plex Media Server on the same LAN
• A Google Nest Hub on the same LAN
• A Plex X-Plex-Token

Marquee is designed for a trusted LAN. It has no login and should not be port-forwarded.

Quick Start

Edit the example IP addresses and token in compose.yaml, then run:

docker compose up -d --build
docker compose logs -f marquee

Open http://SERVER-IP:8084/. The card served to the Hub is http://SERVER-IP:8084/image.

If you prefer plain Docker:

docker build -t marquee:local .
docker run -d --name marquee --restart unless-stopped --network host \
  -e PAGE_URL=http://192.168.1.10:8084/image \
  -e PLEX_HOST=http://localhost:32400 \
  -e PLEX_TOKEN=replace-me \
  -v marquee-config:/config \
  marquee:local

Settings persist under ./data in Compose mode or /config in the container.

Configuration

Required environment variables:

• PAGE_URL — this server's LAN IP + /image. The Hub loads this URL, so localhost will not work here.
• PLEX_HOST — keep http://localhost:32400 when Plex runs on the same machine; otherwise its LAN IP
• PLEX_TOKEN

Cast device: open the settings page and press Scan — Marquee discovers Google Cast devices on your LAN and you pick your Hub from a dropdown. (HUB_IP still works as an env fallback; discovery needs the container on the same network/VLAN as the Hub, which host networking gives you.)

Optional settings:

• PLEX_USERS — comma-separated Plex usernames that trigger the marquee. Leave empty to react to everyone on the server, including shared and home users (the sessions API is server-wide).
• PLEX_DEVICES — comma-separated player/device names that trigger the marquee; empty allows any device. Both filters are also editable live on the settings page, which shows the exact names of active sessions.

When more than one allowed session is playing, each takes the display in turn. Rotate between sessions on the settings page sets how long each gets (default 30 seconds; 0 pins the first, ordered by user then device). Sessions are always sorted before one is picked, so the card never flips at random because the server reordered its session list.

• TMDB_API_KEY
• POLL_SECONDS default 5
• SERVE_PORT default 8084
• REPO_DIR — the container sets /app (the code's own default is /repo)
• DATA_DIR — the container sets /config (the code's own default is REPO_DIR/output)

Env vars that the settings page can also set

Three settings exist in both places, and they combine differently:

Setting	Env var	Settings page	How they combine
Cast device	HUB_IP	Cast device picker	The settings page wins; the env var is only a fallback for when no device has been picked.
Users	PLEX_USERS	Users	Both apply. The two lists are merged.
Devices	PLEX_DEVICES	Devices	Both apply. The two lists are merged.

The merge is worth understanding before you use PLEX_USERS or PLEX_DEVICES. The settings page can only add names to what the env var already allows — it cannot remove them, and it does not display them. If PLEX_USERS=jamison is set in your Compose file, the Users field on the settings page shows up empty, as though nobody were being filtered, while every session except jamison's is silently ignored. Clearing the field changes nothing.

If you want to manage the filters from the settings page, leave PLEX_USERS and PLEX_DEVICES unset. Use them only for a filter you want pinned at the container level, where nobody can lift it from the UI.

Health status is available at /healthz and includes the version.

Plex Token

1. Sign in to Plex Web and open an item on your server.
2. Select More (…) → Get Info → View XML.
3. Copy the value after X-Plex-Token= from the browser address bar.
4. Test it at http://PLEX-IP:32400/?X-Plex-Token=YOUR_TOKEN.

See Plex's token instructions. Never put a real token in Compose files, screenshots, issues, or commits.

For credits-scene badges, create a TMDb account, open Account Settings → API, request a key, and set TMDB_API_KEY.

Tips

Silence the cast chime. Every time Marquee takes over the display, the Nest Hub plays its connect sound. That chime comes from the device, not from Marquee, and there's a switch for it: open the Google Home app → tap your Hub → Settings (gear) → Accessibility → turn off Play sounds on start/end of casting. One-time change; casting is silent afterwards.

Community Forks & Related Projects

• TRusselo's fork — exploring Emby support, ESP32/ESPHome displays, Home Assistant integration, and vertical poster views. Independent project, not maintained or supported here, but worth a look if that's your stack.

Development

docker build -t marquee:test .
docker run --rm marquee:test python cast/cast.py --selftest
docker logs -f marquee

The service uses catt to launch DashCast on the Hub. Ratings come from Plex metadata; optional credits-scene keywords come from TMDb.

Cast behavior

Marquee checks that DashCast is active, casts the /image URL when playback starts, and releases the Hub when playback stops. Container tests cannot prove physical Hub behavior, so before publishing a release:

1. Open PAGE_URL from another LAN device.
2. Start a Plex movie or episode and confirm the Hub loads the card.
3. Pause and resume playback and confirm the progress state updates within one poll interval.
4. Stop playback and confirm the Hub returns to ambient mode.
5. Review docker logs marquee; there should be no catt ... failed message.