Our winning entry for Y! HackU involves a multi-person video chat using webRTC to create a Peer-To-Peer video hangout, which works faster than any other video chat provider. It is ideal for people chatting on the same network (such as corporate & university networks).
#References:
##Technologies Used
- WebRTC
- Collaborative Editing
- Websockets for fast server-client communication
- node.js for powering the backend
- expressJS for fast, easy webserver in node
- Responsive Design
##Libraries Used
##Similar Stuff
- Google Hangouts
- Meetings.io (Uses flash)
#Notes
Since this was developed over a 24 hour hackathon, the code is messy in places. The design is responsive, and should work on most devices (including mobile/tablets). It should degrade to a doc editor + chat for devices without webRTC support (which is just Chrome>=21, Firefox>=17, Opera>=12 at present). The following is the feature set we require for various features:
- Document Editor: Should work everywhere as it is powered by shareJS which uses BrowserChannel
- Video Chat: Should work on devices with getUserMedia support
- Normal Text Chat: It is powered by webRTC.socket, which uses WebSockets internally. I could not get BrowserChannel to work in a separate channel (from shareJS), but that was my first choice. I tried to shift to socket.io, but it caused issues by conflicting with webRTC.socket, so I just used that. This means chat only works in browsers with websocket support