Chatroulette Clone - Way to do it without Adobe?

Question

Is there any way to make a site like Chatroulette without Adobe's software (Cirrus and Flash)?

How?

Answer 1

No, because those are the only services that talk to your webcam. Other services can display the video, but obv both elements are required.

Answer 2

here is the adobe version: http://demo.videosoftware.pro/svc/layouts/crc/VideoChat.html and another one here: http://www.jabbercam.com/chatroulette/

they claim to work with Red5. Red5=Java. It is possible with the first one videosoftware.pro/svc/

Answer 3

Of course you can. You can by using any plugin technology that will allow you to implement a secure plugin or browser extension that will be able break out of the security sandbox of the user's browser and to use APIs to interact with attached devices, like accessing the video streams of a webcam.

Ways of doing it could be (but not limited to):

• with a Java FX or Java Web Start application,
• with a Silverlight application,
• or even with a browser extension (for instance using the Google Chrome Extensions' native APIs).

The problem is not really to find an alternative technology that works, but these technologies' ubiquity (or lack thereof). Flash has been the de-facto software to use to implement complex animations, and later a complex in-browser games, or Rich Internet Applications of various kinds - before the days of HTML5!

So Flash had about 15 years to set itself as the technology leader as there wasn't many good alternatives at the time (Java Applets, ActiveX, meh...), and while we now have a few options (as listed above) or turn towards HTML5 and related technologies for many UI effects, Flash is still often installed on many platforms (and even was and sometimes still is a decision-point when buying hardware like smartphones, if you want to be able to watch videos online and so forth). Thus, Flash (and Shockwave) were more or less the no-brainer approach to doing this.

If you want to use either of the first 2 alternatives given above, the problem you'll hit is that it's less likely that users will have already installed the plugin. Java is a safer bet than Silverlight overall though, at least(especially for non-Windows users), but it's less likely to be readily installed when the user visits your web-app.

The last alternative is a bit of a funky one. it would require users to not only visit your site, but to also install a browser extension with extended permissions to access native APIs. So they not only need to install something, it needs to be tailored for the right browser. Still, it is an alternative.

I'm not saying these are great options, I'm just saying it can definitely be done.

Answer 4

You can replace Cirrus by Cumulus, an Open-Source RTMFP Server