voiceme

The challenge

When a group of friends or teammates wants to talk right now, someone always has to install an app, create an account or join a server first. For one quick game together, that friction is enough to skip voice altogether.

What we built

voiceme: open the site, create a room, send the link. Everyone who opens it can talk straight from the browser, on a computer or a phone. When the last person leaves, the room is gone for good, and nothing is recorded.

The voice system

The heart of voiceme is a voice system we built ourselves on WebRTC, the real-time technology that is built into every modern browser.

• Voices travel directly between the people in the room instead of through a central server, which keeps the delay low
• Our own server only introduces the browsers to each other and keeps track of who is in the room, then steps aside
• When a strict network blocks a direct connection, our own relay server passes the audio along, still encrypted
• Echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic volume are built in, and each person can switch them on or off
• Everyone sets the volume of everyone else, from silent to 150%, and a glowing ring shows who is speaking
• After a network hiccup, the app reconnects by itself and puts you back in the same room

Made for gaming groups

• A League of Legends room type with a lane board for all five roles
• Push-to-talk on a key you choose, and mute on a single key
• Host controls: mute someone for everyone, remove someone for good, lock the room or hand the host role to someone else
• Text chat next to the voice, and a notice when someone is about to join

A fair way to pay

Free rooms show a small ad. voiceme Pro costs €2.99 a month through Stripe, and one Pro member makes the whole room ad-free for everyone in it. Accounts are optional and only needed for Pro.

The result

voiceme went from idea to live product at voiceme.gg in five days, with the voice system, host controls, optional accounts and payments included. Because the audio itself travels between the people talking, the whole product runs on one small server that we host and maintain ourselves. It is a good example of what we do when a client needs something real-time: pick the right building blocks, and keep the running costs low.