WebRTC Video Chat Plugins - Need Help

Just talked with a WebRTC specialist I know. Sounds like the word on the street is that Tokbox iOS has been enabled for a while but it’s “not ready for prime time” yet. I take this to mean that it probably works much of the time, but has connection and quality problems in a way that would prevent it from being used for a large, production grade application.

I would assume they’ll continue to work out the kinks so it’s probably good to use for most companies still getting off the ground. Just passing along this info in case it’s helpful.

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Should we sponsor standard webrtc peer to peer stuff as a plugin ? not just video but voice and shared screens, boards chat any one in?

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That makes sense. Thanks for sharing!

Sridharan might have some insight on the complexity of building a plugin. I believe he looked into it for TokBox at one point but found it more efficient to build out a custom solution (using TokBox) outside of Bubble. Not sure if that would apply to all WebRTC or just TokBox. Either way, it’s not cheap. You may want to try looking at what he’s built and see if you can work something out with him.

From my basic research, it seems like Twilio Video is WebRTC based. Has anyone attempted using Twilio for this type of service? I am keen on doing something similar, but it is over my head in terms of technical ability. @sridharan.s

We haven’t tried Twilio for video. I used them for audio/telephony in the past, but their WebRTC services are newer.

For our product, video is a core component of our product so we want the best quality video possible. The general consensus is that Zoom is great (but their 3rd party white-labeling prices are beyond excessive - costs something like $2/ per person per hour) and that TokBox is really good (and much more affordable).

There are many other services, but many of them have drawbacks if your goal is to provide the best video quality possible. For example, many services struggle with connecting people behind a firewall. That said, if video is a non-core feature of your product then it very well make sense to spend less money for a system that isn’t as robust.

Hope this helps.

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Continuing the back and forth here. It seems like Tokbox could be a good option for simple P2P Video. However, would anyone have any idea on how to generate automatically Unique Room IDs? It is possible according to them, see below…

" if you have an application that needs to dynamically connect individuals in private video chat rooms (for example a doctor and patient), your server-side application could generate unique “room” IDs for each meeting. You could then construct a video chat embed iframe or script snippet using that ID as the room parameter — the users would then load the dynamically created embed in their browser, joining the same room as any other users with the same room ID."

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Yep! “Server-side app” = Bubble. So you would replace the embed code’s “room id” with the parent group’s session’s unique id.

More Detailed Explanation:
Any “thing” that is saved in your app as a data type is automatically generated a unique id by Bubble. Create a data type for your sessions and add the fields you need (start, end, participants, etc.). Put your embed code in a group (or page) of that type. In the embed code, look for and replace the “room id” with “parent group’s session’s unique id.” Now you can do something like list sessions in a repeating group ["do a search for sessions, filtered;participants contains current user, filtered;end date > current date/time, sorted;created yes) with a button that has the workflow “display current cell’s session in Group Embed.”

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I’m thinking of using a video chat service. Does the embed code get put into the header of the page?

@willtaylordesign
I would like to get the TokBox widget only on a specific page.
I have copy/paste it wihtin an HTML element but nothing happened.
Can you explain further how you did it ?
Cheers

No. It’s an iframe so you just drop it into an html component.

Hmm, I know it won’t appear in the editor but will appear in preview. Other than that, are you altering the code at all after pasting?

Thanks @willtaylordesign, it is working now, I did paste the JS code istead of the iFrame.

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Hey, I’ve tried to create the tokbox video chat embed on my website but haven’t been successful. Could you have experienced this? What might be the problem? Thanks

You won’t be able to visualize it on Chrome, however if you run your preview on Firefox it should work

Okay, thank you. Does that mean tokbox doesn’t support visualizing on Chrome?

It does but your site must be HTTPS.

Okay, thanks a lot. I managed to integrate it successfully

Hey there - can I ask you got things to work? Getting the same message and have tried Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

Hello,

WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a peer-to-peer communication protocol that lets browsers communicate through the Internet. Therefore, WebRTC is a way to exchange any kind of media over the web (such as audio, video, and data) without any plugin or framework.

The topic of WebRTC involves numerous technologies. However, connection-making, communication, and data transmission takes place via JS APIs. The primary APIs include:

  • RTCPeerConnection – Creates and navigates peer-to-peer connections,
  • RTCSessionDescription – Describes one end of a connection (or a potential connection) and how it’s configured,
  • navigator.getUserMedia – Captures audio and video.

A server is required for remote connections between two or more devices. You will need a server that can handle real-time communication in this case. Using Node.js for scalable real-time applications is an obvious choice. To develop apps with two-way data exchanges, you should consider using WebSockets, which let clients and servers establish a communication session. This makes Node.js an attractive choice since it takes a “non-blocking” approach to serve requests, which results in a high level of latency and throughput.

You can find many companies that provide web conferencing, video conferencing, peer-to-peer conferencing, as well as custom WebRTC application development for your business.

If you would like to make a custom WebRTC app, I suggest that you consider RTCWeb(.). Below are the services they provide:

  1. Real-time dashboard development
  2. Signaling servers configuration
  3. Custom WebRTC web application
  4. Native app for iOS or Android
  5. Third party WebRTC API integrations
  6. WebRTC consultation

There are a few companies that have adopted WebRTC with offer free chat Api. Many of them are at varying levels of maturity. If you want more details, let you see: https://www.trustfirms.com/best-free-chat-apis-sdks/

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