ZChat- A voice chat software
INTRODUCTION:
ZChat is a general purpose voice chat software( with some experimental video support ) for any network( private or internet ). Currently Linux on an i386 is the target plateform. I have decided to base it on Gstreamer architecture.I am a student & am doing it as my project & i am doing all alone, although Wim Taymans sincere help & answers to my questions had helped me a lot.
MODEL:
Well, there would be 2 parts of the zchat( client & server ), Both of which are necessary on the network on which it will be used. There must be a PC on which the server software would be running all the times.
- The Server: The main task of the server shall be to abstract the users from locating other clients by ip or host names. The clients would only need to use consistent nick names to login to the server to help others find them. There would be a seperate thread in the server whose job would be to check all the currently logged in clients for availability. If it finds any sort of error connecting to them, it will assume that they are offline, so it will logg them off & send a message to them( in case our estimate is wrong & they are still online ). Infact there would be a seperate thread in client too, that would act as a server to this pinger thread in the server programe. Its almost complete.
- The Client: Thats would be doing much of the work for you. Giving you a GUI, connecting to other users( with the help of server of course ), start taking your voice to other client & his voice to you in real-time( using gsm compression technology ). I have decided to to base the ZChat on Gstreamer Architecture. But unfortunatelly, one of the required plugin( rtprecv ) was missing in Gstreamer. So i am doing that myself before writting the client side. I have completed rtprecv, as far as zchat's need is concerned but i want it to be able to stream many kinds of data( gsm, mp3, mpeg video & system streams etc) & be a very nice plugin, as many other people need it in their projects too.
ZChat
SF page