Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by acatton on Saturday December 04, 2021 @09:44PM
(#29446301)
Interesting project.
It might be worth noting that there is the project https://galene.org/ which aims at achieving the same goals as MiroTalk (self hosted, open source), but with a subset of features (no file sharing) and written in Go.
I'm not affiliated with them, but I like what Galène is doing.
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by digitallyfree on Saturday December 04, 2021 @11:11PM
(#29446626)
You mention on the github that you're running this demo on a lightweight 1GB/1vCPU VM - how many calls/concurrent users can this support with that hardware?
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by gus_massa on Sunday December 05, 2021 @07:12AM
(#29448690)
[I'm not answering what you asked, but I hope it's useful anyway.]
I'm in charge of a dozen of T.A. in the university, and for the virtual Math clases each has been using Zoom/Meet/Teams/Jitsi. (I actually don't remember if someone used Jitsi for the clases.) The T.A. have a very strong opinion about which one is the best, and one of the reasons is the whiteboard support.
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by ciarlill on Saturday December 04, 2021 @10:59PM
(#29446586)
I think it's worth noting this is largely an implementation on top of the Mediasoup SFU project. MiroTalk is not really the SFU here. It's just a client and server side API built on top of an existing open source SFU. And they don't appear to mention this or credit Mediasoup for this anywhere. It's a cool project, very useful and appears to be in full compliance with mediasoup licensing... but it still feels a little disingenuous to label it as an SFU.
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by mionhe on Saturday December 04, 2021 @11:48PM
(#29446763)
Unless they've changed it in the last 45 minutes, the first line of the description says: "Powered by WebRTC and SFU integrated server." and "SFU" is a link to the Mediasoup website.
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by ciarlill on Sunday December 05, 2021 @12:07AM
(#29446867)
I guess that's fair. I missed the 3 letter hyperlink in the Github README. Would be nice if some credit was given on https://sfu.mirotalk.org/ Normally I would not be so pedantic about the use of a library, but mediasoup is doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting that makes this possible.
Edit: I see the mediasoup project is also listed by name in the credits section. So I rescind my earlier comment. I still think it's a fine line to call this project itself an SFU though.
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by mp85 on Sunday December 05, 2021 @02:47AM
(#29447569)
Hi ciarlill, thanks for saying it's a Cool project :) credits are always due, if you look at the references cited there are from the first commit. All the best
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by rexreed on Sunday December 05, 2021 @10:59AM
(#29450190)
You got it! I'm always looking for an alternative to Zoom for webinars and webcasting. I usually stream from Zoom to another source where we can have thousands of attendees without having them all join the Zoom session. For MiroTalk to be a good alternative, it needs to support arbitrary RTMPS streaming. Also making sure that our presenters won't have ports blocked is a big issue.
I wish there was a better alternative to YouTube / Vimeo Live for big streaming though, but that might be a much harder thing to do given bandwidth constraints.
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by rexreed on Monday December 06, 2021 @10:54AM
(#29461236)
Got me looking into it! Do you use OBS or a different RTMP streamer or just Owncast directly? I'm looking for more audience engagement in the form of polls, Q&A support as well as visual overlays such as bottom thirds, frames, etc.
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by whimsicalism on Monday December 06, 2021 @10:01AM
(#29460493)
okay, so you don't care. and I'm supposed to care... why?
Worth noting that Miro got its start using the name of another popular software offering also called Miro. If you look up Miro on Algolia HN, most of the discussions are still around the prior Miro OSS software.
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by cassianoleal on Sunday December 05, 2021 @07:52AM
(#29448892)
Hey! Well, that's a coincidence! :)
Initially I thought you'd be setting yourself up for getting sued. It being your second name might complicate matters though. In any case, it will certainly cause confusion!
Re:Show HN: MiroTalk – an alternative to Zoom / Teams
by dang on Saturday December 04, 2021 @08:26PM
(#29445966)
We've changed the title now. Submitted title was "Show HN: 7 reasons why MiroTalk it's an alternative to Zoom / Teams" but that's was a bit clickbaity, which is against the site guidelines (see also the one about numbers in titles): https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Live Demo: https://sfu.mirotalk.org/
[1] It's an Open Source made for You completely Free
[2] You can video call, chat, screen share, share files, use the whiteboard, recording and more
[3] No download, plug-in or login required, entirely browser based
[4] No rooms and users limitation, it holds online meetings for an Unlimited time.
[5] Self-hosted (run it to Your own website or application)
[6] Desktop and Mobile compatible
[7] Can grow further Thanks to Your contribution
Nothing is really ours until we share it.
C.S.Lewis
It might be worth noting that there is the project https://galene.org/ which aims at achieving the same goals as MiroTalk (self hosted, open source), but with a subset of features (no file sharing) and written in Go.
I'm not affiliated with them, but I like what Galène is doing.
If you need to pass data between clients via a TURN server, bandwidth is your limiting factor, well before CPU.
I'm in charge of a dozen of T.A. in the university, and for the virtual Math clases each has been using Zoom/Meet/Teams/Jitsi. (I actually don't remember if someone used Jitsi for the clases.) The T.A. have a very strong opinion about which one is the best, and one of the reasons is the whiteboard support.
Edit: I see the mediasoup project is also listed by name in the credits section. So I rescind my earlier comment. I still think it's a fine line to call this project itself an SFU though.
I wish there was a better alternative to YouTube / Vimeo Live for big streaming though, but that might be a much harder thing to do given bandwidth constraints.
Worth noting that Miro got its start using the name of another popular software offering also called Miro. If you look up Miro on Algolia HN, most of the discussions are still around the prior Miro OSS software.
[1] https://github.com/miroslavpejic85/mirotalk
[2] https://mirotalk.up.railway.app/
You might benefit from choosing a name that doesn't associate you with an existing and widely used collaboration tool.
[0] https://miro.com/
Initially I thought you'd be setting yourself up for getting sued. It being your second name might complicate matters though. In any case, it will certainly cause confusion!
[1] https://github.com/miroslavpejic85/mirotalksfu
[2] https://sfu.mirotalk.org/
The seven reasons are written at the bottom of the page, the first comment.