[HacktionLab] Picnic table zoom

Sat May 23 06:54:21 UTC 2020

Hi all,

Thanks Chris who showed me his BBB server on gogreenit.  We were speculating about bandwidth.  The down to run a meeting is not too much if I remember 1 or 2 MB/s and not too much more for the up if it’s a small meeting two or three people.  In a meeting with 15 people it was about 30 MB/s up and for larger meetings one might want to have at least 100 MB/s (?).  Also users can't use Edge, not sure about safari or opera.  But firefox and chrome are definitely supported.  If you record a session- it can be posted on the server but not sure about the format- I don't think it is an MP4 (which is what Zoom provides) so not sure about video editing a meeting (?)

Also thanks sam and ekes for links - I could get a free account with data reisen via https://bbb.jitsi.world .  Also see blackfly.  I am not sure whether https://meet.blackfly.org is set up by tao.ca or some of them just use it but this is another access.  And no idea what bandwidth any of these will hold.

So far most of the online organizing meetings I have seen have been using zoom.  I helped organize one on post-covid labour movement green new deal.  Another really exciting meeting I attended (*and they are looking for more techie help*) was the Reel News event that is helping a call out for June 1 day of actions.  See https://mailchi.mp/a0ee810ca0d9/reel-news-international-event-tomorrow-friday-22nd-may?e=670b0c07bf The meeting stretched from USA to Pakistan, also Slovenia where the new government is another extremist right wing, also Italy, Geneva, Switzerland and lots of UK people because it was hosted here.  In the last week there were protests and major strikes just suddenly starting up all over the world.   Right now most of this links and coordination seems to be going through zoom so might be good to broaden the platform ecosystem and include a few options where not all the data went through a corporate server.  Some of the zoom bombing incidents people have told me about sounded traumatising- and just generally not good to put all our baskets in one egg.

-----Original Message-----
From: HacktionLab <hacktionlab-bounces at lists.aktivix.org> On Behalf Of Chris Clemson
Sent: 21 April 2020 11:24
To: hacktionlab at lists.aktivix.org
Subject: Re: [HacktionLab] Picnic table zoom

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Hi everyone,
I set up a BBB instance last week on my home server, and while yes, it does take a while to set up, i did the whole thing on a new Ubuntu installation in about half a day.
The official instructions are pretty comprehensive.
The only thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned is that Chrome seems to try and use the flash version of the plugin (both Mac and windows), and then fails to work for anything other than audio.
There's a setting server-side that can fix this, which basically forces everyone to use the HTML5 client. This part took a while to figure out, but apart from that it's pretty good.

I tried Nextcloud Talk, but BBB has more features.
Bandwidth-wise, it takes ~1mbps for each user, although I don't know if this gets esponential as more people join - i've only tried it with 3 participants so far.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be doing a call with 6-8 people and we'll see how it performs.

Another problem was that the first recording didn't show up, so I had to restart the server.
After that, it was fine. Records take a while to transcode before they are available, and therefore take a while to show up in the web gui.
Maybe more virtual CPUs would help as it seems to be using ffmpeg and other bits and bobs.

I've not tried jitsi.

Chris

> I know several hosting collectives have added Jitsi to their collection.
> Though I don't see any of them listing them publicly, so I guess it's 
> when you're involved in a collective using them you'll know.
>
> Correction I just checked and Autistici announced theirs:
> https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2020/03/9587
>
> BBB it somewhat more work to set up as I understand it.
>
> Also there's a list of online activities on radar.squat.net :
>
> https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/XI
> http://3m2pgmhdsgrneurfbi5oxelzbytcgxaeajsmtxuijhen3l3asu3c5yad.onion/
> en/events/country/XI
>
> I know there is way more around. Not sure if anyone is making lists...
>
> sam at bristolwireless.net:
>> If you wanted FOSS video conference software with breakout rooms then 
>> you might like Big Blue button;
>>
>> http://docs.bigbluebutton.org
>>
>> https://github.com/bigbluebutton/greenlight
>>
>> There’s an open instance here: https://bbb.jitsi.world but I’m not 
>> sure who owns/ operates it
>>
>>
>

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