Group IM / Voice solution?

July 24, 2014 3.4k views
CWinthrop
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CWinthrop

Hi all. I currently run 5 Droplets as support for the radio station I manage. We’re looking at possibly spinning up another one for a dedicated group/instant messaging/chat server, but I need to figure out the best way to do it.

Currently we’re using Skype for group (5 to 25) and private (1 on 1) messaging, as well as voice chat. But lately Skype is getting TERRIBLE lag and drops, and there’s no solution forthcoming.

Is there a service (or group of services) that I can host on a Droplet with similar functionality?

I’ve considered Jabber, but it seems to lack a group voice chat feature.

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1 Answer
asb MOD July 25, 2014

Mumble is probably the most well known and widely used self-hosted open-source voice chat server. Ventrilo, while not open source, is another option.

There are a number of HTML5/WebRTC browser based video chat options becoming available.

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  • CWinthrop July 29, 2014

    I gave mumble a test run, and while it’s nice, it doesn’t quite fit my needs. BUT, that HTML5/WebRTC looks very interesting, if I can adapt it to audio only.

  • asb MOD July 29, 2014

    It’s definitely possible. Though I’m not aware of any out of the box solutions right now. There is Voice Chat API, but that requires a Plivo API key.

    You could base something custom on the WebRTC audio conferencing demo app.

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