Show HN: Group video chat with no signups or downloads | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Group video chat with no signups or downloads

itshello.co

91 pointsvasanthv34 comments

This is a great project, and really quite useful. Any way to support desktop sharing, or is that out of scope (as you'd most likely require a plugin, like Appear.in and such).

Thank you for releasing the source code as well, I've been wanting to learn more about WebRTC and it looks remarkably simple to get started with!

Yes currently desktop sharing is only available in Chrome. I am planning to enable it only for the supported browsers soon, as I don't want anyone to download a plugin for this purpose.

It works fine with Firefox without extensions, you can take a look at MuazKhan's demo for inspiration.

Looks cool! Though I don't really see any distinctive features which sets it apart from Jitsi meet ( https://meet.jit.si ) which is also open source?

Jitsi Meet does not work in mobile without downloading their app, but this one does. Just open the URL and it just works from the browser.

Jitsi Meet also provides support for screen sharing.

That is sweet! How do you plan on financing this?

I feel like sometimes you have to develop the thing you want, and can't find anywhere, for people to tell you that it already exists.

Yeah seriously, it's like we need a "Fake Show HN:" to surface these apps that are already out there.

Well the problem is people making things that they don't know exist, so "Ask: HN" would already suit this I suppose...

Doesn't work at all for me. On Firefox I allow camera and mic and just get a black screen, on Chromium it doesn't even ask for camera and mic permissions, but even if I manually enable them it gives me a popup saying that it requires access to them (that same popup never showed up on firefox before I had enabled them, but I didn't outright reject it either, so maybe it just doesn't show until it thinks it asked and I didn't notice it).

Nothing on the console, but I know nothing about front end web development so I'm afraid I probably can't provide a useful bug report.

Similar user experience comment from me: for whatever settings i have on Chrome, all i get when entering is a black screen and a popup that says "This site will not work without microphone/camera access". Not a deal-breaker, but definitely could be a friendlier/welcoming experience

I've also made a similar app a while ago: https://peercalls.com Source is available at: https://github.com/jeremija/peer-calls

I am video chatting a lot, and for some reason desktop-to-desktop in FB Messenger always struggle (mobile is fine usually). This worked instantly, nice.

Although I did notice my internet got cut off twice, usually this happens when I download torrents. Could the P2P of this be the reason for this?

Would be a good idea to remove the google tracker in the github source code. I've created an issue. https://github.com/vasanthv/hello/issues/16

Sure will do. Thanks for pointing out.

Thanks for removing it from GitHub. Would you also consider removing it from the deployed site, please?

Really nice! Might be a good idea to think a little bit about how to communicate your brand.

Many users will have no idea if they ever used your product or not. You should use the network effect of group calls to advertise your product. Maybe just stick your logo in the top right corner?

Does it traverse corporate firewalls? I use appear.in a lot, but all users must be either inside the firewall (VPN works) or outside the firewall, there cannot be a mix.

BTW appear.in went login-only sometime recently (I think? I used it yesterday and was surprised), no more free anonymous rooms :(

jitsi meet still has free anon rooms though

https://appearin.helpscoutdocs.com/article/249-room-doesnt-e...

appear.in went login-only very recently, and they only allow for a single room name, which is a pain in the * (although it's free so I can't complain...)

I'm using talky.io more since the change. Works pretty well, and they allow to start the call with audio only, which is something appear doesn't do.

Ahhh -- yeah, I didn't blame them too much, since of course they need to monetize somehow or maybe even were being crushed under the server load (giving bad service even for free might piss off people or invite bad press).

In the end a bunch of these companies are really just using WebRTC under the covers + some improvements/management on their side, so they should be avoiding most of the load (especially since most of them say they can't support >4 people in a room or whatever since that's the traditional limitation of truly p2p webrtc implementations).

thanks for the pointer to talky.io, I also took note of some of the other suggestions in this thread, will be using them as well.

What is the license of the open source code ?

WTFPL

The link wasn’t copiable for me without grabbing it from the address bar.

Is it possible to record and capture the video?

Looks great! Are the p2p video streams end-to-end encrypted?

webrtc has end-to-end encryption by default built into the browser

Reminds me of the early days of Tinychat.

How will you charge for this? Because if it's free, it won't stick around for long.

Running is cost is negligible. - Paying for the domain (19$/yr). - Using Zeit now's free plan for hosting. - Very low load on the server as it is P2P. - No database.

Guess I can run it for free. :)

Thanks for making it public and open! Might use parts of it in an upcoming project.

Vasanthv put it on GitHub as open source so I don't think they have much of an intent of monetizing the service. I think the lasting impact is that it allows others to easily set up video chat on their own servers.

I made a similar app recently - https://p2p.chat

Code is available here - https://github.com/tom-james-watson/p2p.chat/

(Warning - definitely pretty alpha still)

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