Quick Start

Prerequisites

Using the Otter framework requires the following:

  • An AWS account.
  • npm (Node Package Manager) installed.

The following items are optional:

  • AWS CLI installed and configured.
  • Otter relies heavily on AWS Lambda functions. Configuring the AWS Lambda concurrent execution limit to at least 50 will improve Otter’s performance.

Installation

To install the Otter npm package, open the terminal and run

npm i -g otter-video-cli

To get help, run otter or otter --help.

Otter CLI

Executing otter deploy will provision and deploy Otter’s infrastructure and output the API endpoint along with the API key needed to integrate with Otter.

In addition, it will also create a sample room and output the URL to access it. In essence, it is possible for the developer to interact with Otter without ever writing a single line of code.

otter destroy will teardown the infrastructure deployed by otter deploy.

Create an Otter Room

To create a new room for a video call, send a POST request to the /createRoom route with the API key specified in the Authorization header. The response includes a JSON object representing the room resource created. The url property of the object is the access key to the room. With this URL, an end user can access the Otter Web App.

Join an Otter Room

To access a room, open a browser and visit the URL returned by the /createRoom route. Once the Otter Web App fully loaded, it will ask for permissions to access the audio and video devices of the computer. The video call will officially start when a second peer joins the room.

The Otter Web App has the following features:

  • Audio calling
  • Video calling
  • Instant messaging
  • File sharing
← References
Otter API →