Inspiration

Ever since quarantine started, we've all been spending much more time inside. This caused us to not interact as much with friends anymore to reduce the spread of COVID-19. So we decided to take something that we used to do frequently like spend quality time together and make it accessible for everyone while solving the problems surrounding COVID-19 along with its social constraints.

What it does

6 Feet Apart allows for users to watch YouTube videos together with ease. It allows for the ability to pause/play the video on the host and all its clients while being in sync.

How we built it

To build this project we used HTML, CSS, Javascript, Node.js as well as a number of technologies such as Express, Websocket, and ytdl-core. Node.js was used to run a localhost server and allowed us to install a variety of node modules. Express was used to make managing node modules easier. Websockets allow for a bi-directional interactive communication session between a server and multiple clients. ytdl-core was used to transfer video data from our server to our clients. Bootstrap was used for the front-end design.

Challenges we ran into

There were many challenges that we came across in this project. In particular, when attempting to get our play/pause to act synchronously between clients, as well as combining our back-end net code with our front-end code.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Having a finished product that works as intended
Being able to develop something that we can actually use on a daily basis with friends and family in these times

What we learned

We learned how to make use of node.js and its plethora of modules.
We learned about how server-client connections work through the use of Websockets.
We learned how to use a web-framework like Bootstrap
We learned how to better manage our time in short time spans