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Show HN: Room.sh – a simple online meeting space

57 points by cb22 7y ago

cb22 7y ago
Hey HN, co-founder of room.sh here, happy to answer any questions. We started out building online tools for education but soon began using them to have our own meetings. Behind the scenes, things are powered by a CRDT (specifically, https://github.com/y-js/yjs https://github.com/y-js/yjs) and we're using Janus as a WebRTC SFU. It's not peer to peer, but this brings some advantages (simplicity, more reliable connections, better support for large rooms) and a few disadvantages (bandwidth usage, among others). We're still in beta and working on new features and bug fixes so any feedback is greatly appreciated!
- jakub-swierk 7y ago
  Looks great! Just don't add too much bloat.
- floraaffogato 7y ago
  That's cool. How many people can be present simultaneously in the meeting at most?
  - cb22 7y ago
    At the moment, it's limited to 8 with AV. Without AV though, we've tested past a few hundred with no problems. We've got a pretty long pipeline of features, one of them includes a better setup for things like webinars, with one presenter and a large number of consumers.
Lowkeyloki 7y ago
One feature that's either missing or I just couldn't find was screen sharing. It's my understanding that screen sharing can be done with WebRTC on modern browsers (except Safari?) Other than that, this looks really fantastic.
- a21y 7y ago
  Hey Lowkeyloki, if your browser supports it, you should be able to find the Share Screen button in the bottom left-hand corner of your video feed (the monitor icon).
  - Lowkeyloki 7y ago
    I must have just missed it. Thanks!
  - pxtail 7y ago
    I think that screen share ability should be mentioned in features in prominent place, I was skimming website in order to find out what is it and seemingly non-existent screen share was the reason why I discarded it immediately without even trying anything. Now I'll give it a second look.
imetatroll 7y ago
Minor detail: Black background swallows the eraser icon. Looks really nice and runs smoothly. I've been working on and off on something that is vaguely similar in terms of kinds of tech being used: a vtt for DnD 5E. The link is in my profile if you are curious.
kimmoore 7y ago
Looks awesome. Can't wait to test
kimmoore 7y ago
Looks awesome- cant wait to test
huxflux 7y ago
"All features are available for free during the βeta period! " I like that!
Kagerjay 7y ago
This looks really great. Another cool feature is adding would be adding codepen-like features if the file is set to javascript, with an export to codepen/gist functionality. Or something similar to repl.it
fundamental 7y ago
Nicely put together. One minor thing to consider is for drawing lines in the whiteboard the current approach seems to be line drawing starts with a ctrl+click. In other applications (e.g. gimp) it seems more natural to trigger line drawing via the end location (e.g. shift+click draws a line from the last drawn point to the cursor location). Since I've seen the latter behavior more frequently it seems to be the more intuitive/usable option, though that's just my experience.

57 points by cb22 7y ago

cb22 7y ago

Hey HN, co-founder of room.sh here, happy to answer any questions. We started out building online tools for education but soon began using them to have our own meetings. Behind the scenes, things are powered by a CRDT (specifically, https://github.com/y-js/yjs https://github.com/y-js/yjs) and we're using Janus as a WebRTC SFU. It's not peer to peer, but this brings some advantages (simplicity, more reliable connections, better support for large rooms) and a few disadvantages (bandwidth usage, among others). We're still in beta and working on new features and bug fixes so any feedback is greatly appreciated!

jakub-swierk 7y ago
Looks great! Just don't add too much bloat.
floraaffogato 7y ago
That's cool. How many people can be present simultaneously in the meeting at most?
- cb22 7y ago
  At the moment, it's limited to 8 with AV. Without AV though, we've tested past a few hundred with no problems. We've got a pretty long pipeline of features, one of them includes a better setup for things like webinars, with one presenter and a large number of consumers.

Lowkeyloki 7y ago

One feature that's either missing or I just couldn't find was screen sharing. It's my understanding that screen sharing can be done with WebRTC on modern browsers (except Safari?) Other than that, this looks really fantastic.

a21y 7y ago
Hey Lowkeyloki, if your browser supports it, you should be able to find the Share Screen button in the bottom left-hand corner of your video feed (the monitor icon).
- Lowkeyloki 7y ago
  I must have just missed it. Thanks!
- pxtail 7y ago
  I think that screen share ability should be mentioned in features in prominent place, I was skimming website in order to find out what is it and seemingly non-existent screen share was the reason why I discarded it immediately without even trying anything. Now I'll give it a second look.

imetatroll 7y ago

Minor detail: Black background swallows the eraser icon. Looks really nice and runs smoothly. I've been working on and off on something that is vaguely similar in terms of kinds of tech being used: a vtt for DnD 5E. The link is in my profile if you are curious.

kimmoore 7y ago

Looks awesome. Can't wait to test

kimmoore 7y ago

Looks awesome- cant wait to test

huxflux 7y ago

"All features are available for free during the βeta period! " I like that!

Kagerjay 7y ago

This looks really great. Another cool feature is adding would be adding codepen-like features if the file is set to javascript, with an export to codepen/gist functionality. Or something similar to repl.it

fundamental 7y ago

Nicely put together. One minor thing to consider is for drawing lines in the whiteboard the current approach seems to be line drawing starts with a ctrl+click. In other applications (e.g. gimp) it seems more natural to trigger line drawing via the end location (e.g. shift+click draws a line from the last drawn point to the cursor location). Since I've seen the latter behavior more frequently it seems to be the more intuitive/usable option, though that's just my experience.