Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat

Posted by dhotson on Monday February 10, 2014 @06:38PM
from the show-hn dept.

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!

( 15 comments | 40 points | on HN )

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by dhotson on Monday February 10, 2014 @06:39PM (#7214599)

Screenshot: 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

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by djoehlman on Monday February 10, 2014 @08:59PM (#7215211)

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...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by djoehlman on Monday February 10, 2014 @09:01PM (#7215216)

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/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by dhotson on Monday February 10, 2014 @09:02PM (#7215226)

Hey cool, I didn't know about this. Thank you!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by lars512 on Tuesday February 11, 2014 @12:24AM (#7215960)

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by podviaznikov on Tuesday February 11, 2014 @03:43AM (#7216568)

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

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by rhgraysonii on Friday February 14, 2014 @01:35PM (#7240125)

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by abimaelmartell on Monday February 10, 2014 @08:29PM (#7215075)

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

I see...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by dhotson on Monday February 10, 2014 @08:34PM (#7215097)

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

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by lawrencegs on Monday February 10, 2014 @08:52PM (#7215180)

"Could not connect stream" ?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by lawrencegs on Monday February 10, 2014 @08:55PM (#7215189)

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

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by k0mplex on Monday February 10, 2014 @08:33PM (#7215089)

it's chatroulette right now

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by taphangum on Monday February 10, 2014 @07:31PM (#7214821)

Very cool! Upvoted.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by binaryjohn on Monday February 10, 2014 @10:35PM (#7215624)

Very, cool

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: faces.io – ridiculously simple video chat by jayrparro on Monday February 10, 2014 @09:03PM (#7215229)

good work!

[ Parent | on HN ]