Inspiration
Video calling technology has become an integral part of every business. The last 10 to 15 years that we have seen video calling have immensely used not only on a corporate level but also at the individual level for personal use. This app we took my inspiration from the Zoom app, our video chat application is a beginners prototype for the original zoom app. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, we have observed that in order to keep in contact with each other, many people have taken to using video meeting software and apps. It all started with employees working from home, followed by the government using it for conferences. Then teachers used it for classes and live concerts by Artists on social media! So the video conferencing exploded during corona lockdown. But at that time many video chat application companies provide only subscription-based services that has multiple tiers of subscription based on the number of attendees you plan for. Hosting a webinar that can allow up to 10,000 attendees can cost several thousand dollars a month. Thus the high price can make it very difficult for small businesses to even get started in the first place. Some of the video chat services do not work without downloading an app for your browser. Also, we noticed the difficulty doctors at the hospital had in order to connect with the paitents during the 2nd wave . As our video chat application supports good quality picture even at 2G and 3G ,this application can be deployed in a hospital and can be used by doctors for video calling with the paitents. Thus, our team decided to create such a video chat application that will tackle all these problems so that every person can use our video chat application free of cost without any subscription, or without any restriction on the duration of video calls.
What it does
This application fetches a unique id from the host’s network copies it to the clipboard. The host sends the id to the respective person. The person writes the id i.e the invite id for video call and in this way both the host and the person is connected. It supports up to 10-12 users currently to prevent crashing of the application.
How we built it
Technologies used
• Frontend: React JS, Material UI, CSS • Backend: Node JS • Other Tools: Peer JS, Socket IO, WEBRTC
The front end was built by me with complete integration of socket io and WEBRTC video calling services. The backend was done by Rishabh which ensures the request of requesting the server to give a unique id to the host conducting the video call on Node JS. Some parts of Material UI are done by my fellow teammates Yash and Deevanshu.
Challenges we ran into
Since none of us know socket programming on JavaScript we spent an ample amount of time learning it then we are able to integrate the application. After we are done with the app the button for fetching the unique id is not working properly. Instead of giving the id, it is displaying the code chunk for the button so we have to debug this and resolve the error.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of having made something that society can benefit from in the long run.
What we learned
We learned about more advanced topics of React JS including hooks. We have also learned about socket programming and WEBRTC services. Since we all are beginners in React JS currently it was an exponential learning curve for all. We all learned various soft skills like communication and teamwork along with coding.
What's next for Video Chat App
We are really hoping to add subtitles for the required language. We are also planning to add a room type feature that exists on zoom.
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