Video Chat:

Features

• For small groups
• Browser based
• Signaling over Chat Server or Firebase
• No media server
• Screen sharing
• Text-Chat with images
• Change of video and microphone source
• Mobile friendly
• Customizable design

Demo

Demo: https://chat.gise.at

The characters after the hashtag define the room, if no hashtag is selected, the create room dialog is displayed.

For example, all visitors with a link to https://chat.gise.at/#roulette-chat enter into a room and can communicate with each other there.

Therefore simply forward the current URL to invite others.

Own installation

This video chat is made to install it on an own web server. For signaling you can use a free Firebase project or using the Chat Server base on node.js.

Prerequisites

• Local development environment
  • Git
  • Node.js
  • npm
• Server
  • nginx or apache

Configuration

Load code and dependencies in your local development environment:

git clone https://github.com/vgiselbrecht/gise-video-chat.git gise-video-chat
cd gise-video-chat
npm install

Create configuration and customize files

Linux

cp src/config.tmp.json src/config.json
cp src/assets/sass/_custom.tmp.scss src/assets/sass/_custom.scss 

Windows

copy src\config.tmp.json src\config.json
copy src\assets\sass\_custom.tmp.scss src\assets\sass\_custom.scss 

Adjust the configuration

The full configuration can be made in the src/config.json file.

The most important thing is the "exchangeServices" for signaling. There are two ways for signaling, over the node.js base Chat Server or a free Firebase Project.

In "exchangeServices/service" it is specified whether the Chat Server (chat-server) or Firebase (firebase) is used.

Chat Server

For connection to Chat Server you have to install Chat Server on an own server. In "exchangeServices/chat-server/host" you have to add the Web Socket URI to this server.

{
    "exchangeServices": { 
        "service": "chat-server",
        "chat-server": {
            "host": "wss://chat-server.example.com"
        }
    },
}

Firebase

You need to create a free Firebase Project with anonymous authentication and realtime database. The Firebase configuration must be deposited at "exchangeServices/firebase".

{
    "exchangeServices": { 
        "service": "firebase",
        "firebase": {
            "apiKey": "",
            "authDomain": "",
            "databaseURL": "",
            "projectId": "",
            "storageBucket": "",
            "messagingSenderId": "",
            "appId": "",
            "measurementId": ""
        }
    },
}

STUN and TURN Server

Additional STUN / TURN Server can also be added in communication/webrtc/iceServers. To use this video chat behind some Firewalls and NATs, you need a TURN server.

List of free STUN and TURN Server

With certain systems (e.g. Twilio) it is necessary that the IceServers change frequently. Therefore it is possible to load the IceServer configuration dynamically with communication/webrtc/iceServersFromUrl. In the given URL, a return in JSON format is requested in the same way as with the iceServers Parameter ([{"urls": ""},...]).

Features

Some features can be activated individually per installation.

• soundEffects (false) -> activate sound effects for diffrent events
• mutePartner (true) -> function to mute partner for all
• soundOffPartner (true) -> function to put the sound off at one for a partner

Example full chat configuration

{
    "meta": {
        "title": "Video Chat",
        "description": "Open-Source video chat based on WebRTC and Firebase.",
        "keywords": "chat, webrtc, video-call, video-chat",
        "image": ""
    },
    "privacy": {
        "firebaseAnalytics": 0,
        "imprint": "",
        "gdpr": ""
    },
    "exchangeServices": { 
        "service": "chat-server",
        "chat-server": {
            "host": "wss://"
        }
    },
    "communication": {
        "webrtc": {
            "iceServers": [
                {"urls": "stun:stun.services.mozilla.com"}, 
                {"urls": "stun:stun.l.google.com:19302"}
            ],
            "iceServersFromUrl": ""
        }
    },
    "features": {
        "soundEffects": false,
        "mutePartner": true, 
        "soundOffPartner": true
    }
}

Deploy video chat for development

grunt deploy

Add content from dist directory to the document root of your local web server.

Deploy video chat for production

grunt deploy --target=production

Copy content from dist directory to your web server.

Development

grunt watch

Change the compiled code in dist directory after saving a project file. Ideally the dist directory is the document root of a local web server like nginx or apache.