Virtual Door Knocker

Let people let YOU know when they are here when your busy with other things and might miss them, either for the home, or at the office, or in a retail store as a replacement service bell

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Inspiration

Needed something simple to play with ably concepts and apis

What it does

The virtual door knocker lets logged in hosts hear knocks from logged in visitors.

How we built it

Fumbling through the ably docs and tutorials to pare down to simple concepts.

Challenges I ran into

Time involved in having to test a multi-collaboration environemt so that you bascially are always acting as multiple testers. Making a video, cannot use built in recorder for multiple windows as needed for testing such a project. Trying to figure out how to build "rooms" or lobbies so there could be unique instances or users can create private houses, didn't get this worked out for submission. Autoplay policies for the web audio api, prevents initial sound tests, which made me scrap initial ideas. Navigating the ably tutorials and inactive demos. Moving authentication to the backend to get api keys out of the pages script.js Real life time limitations.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Remote interactive audio.

What I learned

Some of the basics for the ably api, and web audio api through the howler.js library.

What's next for Virtual Door Knocker

Private houses (rooms) setup. lotr Easter egg Shareable house addresses, un-guessable Shareable house addresses Custom art (i.e. svg door design) and animations, and design review. Multiple doors (i.e. offices) Custom Door images. Custom knock sounds, loud obnoxious knocking for those types of visitors. Custom knock sounds per visitor* Accessibility via page flashing for the hearing impaired. Presence & cursors to show where someone is knocking AND enable SPATIAL audio. Scheduling so door is availably or not i.e a porch light or a profile picture seen through a window,etc.

*Custom sounds per visitor would enable the original idea to offshoot for a Realtime interactive drum kit multiplayer music experience.

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