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Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat

40 points by dhotson 13y ago

This is something fun I’ve been hacking on recently: ridiculously simple group chat. Go to http://faces.io and then get your friends to do the same. That’s it! :-D Currently works best in Chrome. It’s definitely beta status at best. Audio can get weird—be ready to mute. ;-) Let me know what you think!

abimaelmartell 13y ago
"This is the hackiest code I've ever written. Most of it is copy pasted from elsewhere. ;-)" I see...
- dhotson 13y ago
  Isn't there a rule about if you're not embarassed about your 1.0 then you're not shipping fast enough? ;-) Basically I just wanted to try out some ideas using WebRTC peer-to-peer video with some clever layout algorithms. When I started this I was looking into libraries like Packery that are good at arranging rectangles in the smallest possible space. But I found what I really wanted was something to expand to fill all available space. I ended up using D3's treemaps to arrange videos. Normally they're used for visualising things like diskspace, but I'm using it to fill the screen with videos. https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Treemap-Layout https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Treemap-Layout
k0mplex 13y ago
it's chatroulette right now
lawrencegs 13y ago
"Could not connect stream" ?
- lawrencegs 13y ago
  Nevermind, its because I was using the webcam on a different window (Google Hangout).
djoehlman 13y ago
Sweet layout - love it. Also while there was no hope of any client being able to decode that amount of video at one time I think it does show that the overheads of a RTCPeerConnection (without media) aren't extreme. My browser here has currently got about 60 peer connection objects open (not sure how many actually connected), but CPU and memory aren't going too crazy...
djoehlman 13y ago
Oh, and if you want to get a picture of what chrome (assuming you are using chrome) is doing in the background use this url: chrome://webrtc-internals/
- dhotson 13y ago
  Hey cool, I didn't know about this. Thank you!
jayrparro 13y ago
good work!
dhotson 13y ago
Screenshot: http://24.media.tumblr.com/07de3da18d8a5587d9480f42e87da8c4/tumblr_n0rz6fkSBG1qz7eo6o1_500.png http://24.media.tumblr.com/07de3da18d8a5587d9480f42e87da8c4/... Bonus pro tip, add a hash target in the url to have a more private conversation. eg http://faces.io/#hn http://faces.io/#hn
taphangum 13y ago
Very cool! Upvoted.
binaryjohn 13y ago
Very, cool
lars512 13y ago
This is really cool, instant video-conferencing: sha1=$(head -c 1024 /dev/urandom | shasum | cut -d ' ' -f 1) open http://faces.io/#$sha1 send the URL to whoever you want to video-conference with.
podviaznikov 13y ago
This weekend I made text chat with video and no voice for hackathon. Demo is here: http://ss14-team-176.divshot.io http://ss14-team-176.divshot.io Also used webRTC like in faces.io
rhgraysonii 13y ago
Whats the limit on concurrent callers? We have had to stop using google hangouts for our morning standup due to more than 9 of us being on at times.

40 points by dhotson 13y ago

abimaelmartell 13y ago

"This is the hackiest code I've ever written. Most of it is copy pasted from elsewhere. ;-)" I see...

dhotson 13y ago
Isn't there a rule about if you're not embarassed about your 1.0 then you're not shipping fast enough? ;-) Basically I just wanted to try out some ideas using WebRTC peer-to-peer video with some clever layout algorithms. When I started this I was looking into libraries like Packery that are good at arranging rectangles in the smallest possible space. But I found what I really wanted was something to expand to fill all available space. I ended up using D3's treemaps to arrange videos. Normally they're used for visualising things like diskspace, but I'm using it to fill the screen with videos. https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Treemap-Layout https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Treemap-Layout

k0mplex 13y ago

it's chatroulette right now

lawrencegs 13y ago

"Could not connect stream" ?

lawrencegs 13y ago
Nevermind, its because I was using the webcam on a different window (Google Hangout).

djoehlman 13y ago

Sweet layout - love it. Also while there was no hope of any client being able to decode that amount of video at one time I think it does show that the overheads of a RTCPeerConnection (without media) aren't extreme. My browser here has currently got about 60 peer connection objects open (not sure how many actually connected), but CPU and memory aren't going too crazy...

djoehlman 13y ago

Oh, and if you want to get a picture of what chrome (assuming you are using chrome) is doing in the background use this url: chrome://webrtc-internals/

dhotson 13y ago
Hey cool, I didn't know about this. Thank you!

jayrparro 13y ago

good work!

dhotson 13y ago

Screenshot: http://24.media.tumblr.com/07de3da18d8a5587d9480f42e87da8c4/tumblr_n0rz6fkSBG1qz7eo6o1_500.png http://24.media.tumblr.com/07de3da18d8a5587d9480f42e87da8c4/... Bonus pro tip, add a hash target in the url to have a more private conversation. eg http://faces.io/#hn http://faces.io/#hn

taphangum 13y ago

Very cool! Upvoted.

binaryjohn 13y ago

Very, cool

lars512 13y ago

This is really cool, instant video-conferencing: sha1=$(head -c 1024 /dev/urandom | shasum | cut -d ' ' -f 1) open http://faces.io/#$sha1 send the URL to whoever you want to video-conference with.

podviaznikov 13y ago

This weekend I made text chat with video and no voice for hackathon. Demo is here: http://ss14-team-176.divshot.io http://ss14-team-176.divshot.io Also used webRTC like in faces.io

rhgraysonii 13y ago

Whats the limit on concurrent callers? We have had to stop using google hangouts for our morning standup due to more than 9 of us being on at times.