Telepresense project resurrected but needs help

[Jeremy Z]

As many of you know we had a telepresense setup going (it was very rough), it consisted of a netbook with Win XP, a webcam, speakers, and some remote desktop software. It was clunky and not automated, ran on an under powered (for video) netbook, and there were a couple times where someone unplugged things without asking and then didn't even return it (were they worried about being on camera?). But it did work and did give a few an opportunity to connect with the space remotely.

The project fell by the wayside until I recently learned about Selenium and webdriver. Selenium is a tool that allows you to automate anything that's in a web browser, most people who use it are web developers and they use it in automation testing for their websites, another popular use is to scrape data from websites that isn't otherwise easy to get or is tedious and time consuming. Anyway since it's super powerful like that I've started working on a new telepresense setup, or at least a proof of concept.

So far I've got it logging into YouTube and starting a broadcast/hangout (here's little a demo video I made: https://player.vimeo.com/video/136534463 ). The next step I want to do is monitor the chat window for camera movement commands and send that via serial to an Arduino to control some hobby servos to pan and tilt the camera. I already have the servo/camera rig built, and I think monitoring the chat will be fairly trivial (at least for this proof of concept).

After that the main work I think will be:
  Automating so broadcasts can be initiated remotely (likely publicly, possibly just click a button on the website to start and/or join a broadcast) or on a schedule (like running during our regularly scheduled hours)

  Handle any problems or crashes or timeouts or variations in page loads

  Setup so it can run in a VM in the background on either the laser computer or maybe James' computer or something

  Clean up code (always)

  Make it mobile so it can "drive" around the space (anyone wanna donate some hardware?)

  More cool feature creep ideas

  Bug fixes

I'd like to open this up so those with an interest in the project and/or Java expertise can help. Yes, I'm coding it in Java, it's the easiest to setup, best supported (great eclipse integration and most popular it seems) and has been working like a charm so far. And Firefox, because Selenium Webdriver support is native. If you're interested in helping, just join in, also I'll likely be at the space on Tuesday if anyone wants to work on it with me.

Dirty 'ol proof of concept code is attached Note that you'll have to setup a Firefox profile called googletalkprofile that has the google talk and video plugins enabled (ref: http://www.toolsqa.com/selenium-webdriver/custom-firefox-profile/ ).
[disclaimer: I'm not a software engineer. This is super beta proof of concept code, so it may not work for you and it could open an inter-dimensional trans-warp portal to Planet X1 in the Alph-Ceti-9 Solar System. I've only tried it on Win7x64, but it's Java so it should work anywhere :P .]

Good getting started vids:
[How to install and setup everything] Selenium Tutorial - Selenium IDE In Depth – Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yz9hzTueWM

Selenium Tutorial for Beginner - Starting with Selenium WebDriver – Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eJ2cZXyJ0E

Selenium Tutorial for Beginner - Starting with Selenium WebDriver – Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0U8I8fpqWo

Cheers,

Jeremy

[tookys3]

The computer i keep at the space is welcome for use in any projects yall want to put on it.

All i ask is that yall not mess with the windows 10 install. 

Sent via the Samsung GALAXY S®4, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "10BitWorks" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sa-hackerspac...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sa-hack...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sa-hackerspace/CADv0g8rWrPKDRKeELmV%2BxEn8TGnXS2%3D3YvMK-2nL9V%2BEaJoGPw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Matt Grooms]

He that looks pretty cool Jeremy. Reminds me somewhat of the Google Hangouts Livebots Extensions. They passed movement commands from the Hangout session out serial to a bot carrying a tablet that was hosting the hangout! The site looks  pretty stale, must have been overcome by something better.

Now that we have 10bitworks.org hosted on GoogleApps for Non-Profits, Google Hangouts are a snap for any basic teleconference needs we have at the space, but a mobile bot that could navigate the space based on offsite user input would be way-cool. 

Grimey

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "10BitWorks" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sa-hackerspac...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sa-hack...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sa-hackerspace/CADv0g8rWrPKDRKeELmV%2BxEn8TGnXS2%3D3YvMK-2nL9V%2BEaJoGPw%40mail.gmail.com.

<Start10BitPrivateYouTubeLive.java>