WebRTC Video Chat

Very basic and somewhat buggy reference implementation of multi-user, WebRTC video chat in the browser. This was developed for a meetup. I don't find slides very helpful in general, but if you want them, they are here. The last page of the slides has some links to some helpful learning resources, so do check that out.

To start the signaling server and client server, run npm start. You can open the page at http://localhost:5500/.

For the turn-server,

cd ./turn-server
./build.sh
./build/turn-server --public-ip=<your_public_ip>

When running locally, you can test by opening the page in different browser tabs. You can also test connecting from different devices on the same local network if you're using https.

command args:

• --ssl-cert-path path to ssl cert (not required when running locally)
• --ssl-key-path path to ssl key (not required when running locally)
• run node commands with --prod to use proper port numbers
• run turn server with --public-ip <your_public_ip> (set to your local ip address when running locally)

Some ideas for enhancements if you want to tinker:

• mute/unmute
• turn camera on/off
• switch camera source
• allow participants to rename themselves
• share screen (hint: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MediaDevices/getDisplayMedia)
• live chat (not really WebRTC, but could still be fun to try if you're new to web sockets)
• try forcing the peers to use a specific ICE candidate pair by filtering what ice candidates you send over the signaling server.
• share files or other data over WebRTC (hint: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/RTCPeerConnection/createDataChannel)
• experiment with different signaling server implementations. I built the simplest possible thing that would work, but you could use any technology or messaging system you want.