clivrt

CLI app to do video calls but from the terminal. Just fun little project that let's you chat with friends in a retro kinda way - while staying in your CLI.

How to use this

Download an official release from here. Tweak your .clivrt as needed (a bit manual right now :disappointed_relieved:). Run the app ./clivrt.

Once in the app you'll see status across the bottom for both a connection to the chat server 📢 (text) and direct to other users 👤 (video/audio). Initially, both will be disconnected. Type login to login to the default chat server as an anonymous user (you can use --server and --user to connect to a private server and set your username). A locked lock 🔒 indicates a secure connection and an unlocked lock 🔓 indicates insecure.

Once logged in you can see who else is online with lookup. You can text chat to everyone with say <message>. And you can directly call someone with call <user>.

When you are done with your call, hangup.

When you are ready to leave the server logout or just quit

CLI reference

Use tab to autocomplete any of the following:

• login (options: --user, --server)
• logout (options: -f to force)
• lookup
• say
• call
• hangup
• quit

Configuration

The file is is located in the same folder as the cli executable and named .clivrt, it will be used for default config. Here's an example:

[DEFAULT]
signalinghosturl = wss://signaling-s-dudash-dev.apps.sandbox.x8i5.p1.openshiftapps.com
autoanswer = true
loglevel = WARN
videostyle = just-ascii
webcam = /dev/video0
framerate = 30
frame_interval = 4
video_size = 800x600

• signalinghosturl = Which server to connect to for finding/connecting/chatting with peers (note once a peer connection is established this is no longer required for video chat). Must begin with ws:// or wss://
• loglevel = [INFO, DEBUG, WARN, ERROR, CRITICAL] how much log data to display
• videostyle = [just-ascii, ascii-color, filled-ascii] pick your sytle for visualizing the video as ASCII
• webcam = Path to your webcam. Some examples: [linux: /dev/video0, windows: video=Integrated Camera, mac: default:none]
• framerate = outgoing video framerate
• frame_interval = allows incoming frames to be dropped to improve performance. (e.g. a value of 4 here will only print every 4th frame)
• video_size = outgoing video resolution

For Developers and Architects

You can debug and run with: pipenv run python clivrt.py

About WebRTC

This app utilizes WebRTC. From mozilla: "WebRTC is a fully peer-to-peer technology for the real-time exchange of audio, video, and data, with one central caveat. A form of discovery and media format negotiation must take place, as discussed elsewhere, in order for two devices on different networks to locate one another. This process is called signaling and involves both devices connecting to a third, mutually agreed-upon server. Through this third server, the two devices can locate one another, and exchange negotiation messages."

The main reasons WebRTC was picked for this are:

1. peer-to-peer means we get great performance, not needing to send video through a server
2. it's an open standard with W3C and IETF

Building the Code

The supported platform is currently just linux. If you're on windows you can use WSL. This project uses pipenv for dependency management.

even more info here

Contributing

We'd love contributions! Please make sure you are working against an documented issue. If it's something that might require approval and discussion please tag and socialize the idea with an owner first (@dudash or @andykrohg).

Built Upon

This project uses the awesome open source work from many other folks. There are a few key projects this wouldn't be possible without:

• aiortc, a simple readable python library for WebRTC and ORTC
• video_to_ascii, simple python package to play videos in the terminal using characters as pixels
• prompt_toolkit, a library for building powerful interactive command line apps

Some other interesting things

• The architecture design lives here in Miro
• Concurrency in Python a good reference here