Inspiration
Our biggest inspiration comes from our experiences. The moment we got on, we all appreciated the fact that we can have an open discussion as if we were meeting physically. However, we came to terms the reality is for many other places, and we wanted to make any change we can to help people be closer together in these dire times.
What it does
This is a peer-to-peer application that allows live conferencing but converts the images to ASCII art to allow better data compression.
How we built it
We build all of it in React, however, we also used various libraries that utilize WebRTC. More specifically, we grabbed the stream from the user's via the webcam. We then converted each frame (which we rate-limited to every 50 ms) to ASCII characters and then sent that to the connected peer, and display that to the connected user.
Challenges we ran into
None of us have any networking experience, and especially at the development level, so understanding from WebRTC to sockets as well as implementing the technologies was a huge leap for all of us. In addition, the majority of us are backend engineers, so working on a solely front-end project has allowed us to learn many things.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are accomplished to finished the prototype for the task. While it may not be polished, we know it is viable.
What we learned
We have learned many aspects of React, especially as it was the first time for some our group members.
What's next for Zoom Lite
Allow group calls as well as implementing lossless compression algorithms to further decrease the barrier to entry to our product.
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