Most of them are more polished than VROOM, but I've found none entirely opensource, so I started this project.
</p>
<p>
@ -38,11 +39,11 @@
<p>
VROOM implements the following features:
<ul>
<li>Audio/Video conversations (no limit on the number of peers per room)</li>
<li>Text chat (with possibility to save the history)</li>
<li>Screen or single windows sharing sharing</li>
<li>Invite anyone by email</li>
<li>Be notified (by email) when someone joins one of your rooms</li>
<li>P2P Audio/Video conversations (no limit on the number of peers per room)</li>
<li>P2P text chat</li>
<li>Screen or single windows sharing</li>
<li>Send invitations by email</li>
<li>Be notified when someone joins one of your rooms</li>
<li>Persistent/reserved rooms</li>
<li>Chairman functionnalities (mute/pause/kick other peers)</li>
<li>Grant chairman role to other peers</li>
@ -60,24 +61,35 @@
How it works
</h1>
<p>
WebRTC allows browsers to browsers direct connections. This provides the best latency as it avoids round trip through a server,
<a href="http://www.webrtc.org/" taget="_blank">WebRTC</a> allows browsers to browsers direct connections. This provides the best latency as it avoids round trip through a server,
which is important with real time communications. But it also ensures the privacy of your communications. VROOM takes advantage of those
new technologies, and does the following:
<ul>
<li>When a client joins a room, it establishes a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSocket" target="_blank">websocket</a> connection to VROOM server.
This is called the signaling channel. With this, all peers are able to exchange small messages with each other. But messages sent through this channels are
routed through VROOM server, so it's not yet peer to peer</li>
routed through VROOM server, so it's not peer to peer yet</li>
<li>When a second peer joins the same room, he gets informations about how to connect directly to the other one(s) through this signaling channel.</li>
<li>Now, both peer exchange their video and audio stream directly</li>
<li>The signaling channel stays open and is used to transmit non sensitive informations (peer colors synchronization, notification of muting/kicking etc...)</li>
<li>Everything else (audio/video/text chat) is sent through data channels</li>
<li>Everything else (audio/video/text chat) is sent directly between peers through data channels</li>
</ul>
</p>
<div class="alert alert-warning">
As long as possible, data channels and audio/video streams are established directly between peers, but in some situations, this is not possible (NAT, firewalls etc...). In those cases
As long as possible, data channels and audio/video streams are established directly between peers, but in some situations, this is not possible (NAT, restrictive firewalls etc...). In those cases
data streams are relayed through a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traversal_Using_Relays_around_NAT" target="_blank">TURN</a> server
</div>
<h1 id="technologies">
Technologies
</h1>
VROOM is composed of two distincts
<ul>
<li>The client side: written in Javascript, it's the code executed on the browsers. This is where webcam streams are captured and sent to other peers. The biggest part is
<li>The server side: mainly written in Perl using the fabulous <a href="http://mojolicio.us/" target="_blank">Mojolicious</a> framework. This is where room are created
their configurations are stored, and where permissions are managed</li>
</ul>
<h1 id="install_your_own">
Install your own VROOM instance
</h1>
@ -89,13 +101,13 @@
<p>
If you want to run your own VROOM instance, you'll need the following components
<ul>
<li><a href="http://mojolicio.us" target="_blank">Mojolicious</a> 5 or better</li>
<li>A MySQL compatible server (MySQL or MariaDB)</li>
<li>A webserver supporting HTTPS and reverse proxying, including websocket reverse proxying (Apache can do this with mod_proxy_wstunnel)</li>
<li>The following perl modules
<ul>
<li>DBI</li>
<li>DBD::mysql</li>
<li>Mojolicious</li>
<li>Mojolicious::Plugin::Mail</li>
<li>Mojolicious::Plugin::Database</li>
<li>Mojolicious::Plugin::StaticCompressor</li>
@ -133,11 +145,11 @@
</li>
</ul>
It's also advised to run VROOM on a systemd powered distribution (simply because that's what I use and I include service units for VROOM).
For the same reason, I recommend running Apache as webserver (others like Nginx probably work too, but I provide configuration sample only for Apache)
For the same reasons, I recommend running Apache as webserver (others like Nginx probably work too, but I provide configuration sample only for Apache)
</p>
<div class="alert alert-warning">
VROOM can probably work with other DB engine (like PostgreSQL) with minor modifications.
If you're interrested in adding support for other engines, you're welcome to help
VROOM can probably work with other database engines (like PostgreSQL) with minor modifications.
If you're interrested in adding support, you're welcome to help
</div>
<div class="alert alert-warning">
While VROOM should run on any distro, it's only tested on CentOS 7 x86_64, so it's the recommended platform.
Daniel Berteaud
10 years ago