3xcellent / intercom

GRPC Stream Spike

Intercom

Golang GRPC stream server and client for sending audio and video.

This is a demonstration of a bi-directional GRPC stream, while also being somewhat interesting in that it is streaming audio and images with the connected microphone and webcam. I have so far only tested on a Macbook Pro. While the following installation instructions are for OSX as well, there is no reason this wouldn't work on other OS's with the proper gocv and portaudio installations.

I would eventually like to target running on a Raspberry Pi with an attached display, webcam, and microphone. Otherwise, I hope to learn a bit about:

• GRPC Streams
• Golang Threading
• Audio/Video

Dev Workstation Setup

1. Install Opencv

   brew install opencv
   

   Install pk-config if not already installed

   brew install pkg-config
   

   be sure to have pkg-config var set correctly

   export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/
   

   Opencv comes with it's own .pc, move it or simlink it to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH

   ln -s /usr/local/opt/opencv@4/lib/pkgconfig/opencv4.pc $PKG_CONFIG_PATH
   

   Add these lines to your environment .bash_profile or similiar

   export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/
   alias opencvflags="pkg-config --cflags --libs opencv"
   

2. Install PortAudio

   brew install portaudio
   

GRPC

Using protobuf and protoc for code-generation of go files (i.e. intercom.pb.go)

To generate updated proto files, run:

cd _proto
protoc \
  -I ./ \
  --go_out=plugins=grpc:../proto \
  intercom.proto

Running

1. Start Server

   cd cmd/server
   go run main.go
   

2. Start Client

   cd cmd/client
   go run main.go 0 [path to background image, hopefully a kitten]
   

   Press [Spacebar] to broadcast

   Press [Esc] to exit

   Note that feedback can occur. Once multiple clients are supported this can be addressed.