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Posted 2005/11/02

Notes on testing NBChat portlet

Today the DSG got together to test the NBChat portlet which provides a chat client and webcam viewer for online collaboration between multiple users. Here are my notes.

Following the instructions from Raz I installed JMF and rebooted Windows. I then started JMFStudio looked in prefs and it said no capture devices detected so I loaded Windows Movie Maker to test webcam and all was OK.

Using Firefox I logged into GridSphere portal and got the welcome page.
Following email instructions I clicked the radio button for “narada chat” and clicked save.
I saw I had a new tab at the top of the page called “nbchat_acjsp” clicked the tab.
Typo on this page: “please got to the edit page to make a connection”
Re Raz instructions I clicked the pencil - I would not have known how to edit the page if it was for his email, perhaps the on screen instructions could say “please edit page - click the pencil”.
I filled in the custom settings and clicked connect browser sat there saying “waiting for portals.dsg.port.ac.uk…”.
I waited for 3 minutes and nothing happened, perhaps Raz wasn't ready yet - I was trying this at 13:21 which is before test start. I decided to eat lunch and wait for 14:30.

In between I rebooted Windows and ran the JMF studio video/audio detect, it sat there saying it was looking for devices, the webcam light flashed every now and then. After 15 minutes i gave up.

At the official test start time I went back to the chat portlet and after adding the IP and port the client appeared to connect OK. The screen said “connected to broker as mjeg”. I clicked the join button and nothing happened - reading the email I realised I was supposed to click the < button on the page, without the email instructions to guide me I would have sat there clicking the join and connect buttons. After doing this I got a chat window, everything i sent to chat I received twice (like an echo). I shut the browser and tried again. This time I didn't get my messages twice. I waited to see other people send text and realised you have to click receive to get messages people are typing - I was expecting to work like IRC (text just appears).

I have successfully reproduced the “echo” effect by connecting to the broker twice ? fill the connect form in and submit it twice, then go into the chat window and you get everything you type is sent to you twice.

I clicked the Video JMS tab to try and get some video, starting with raz. The Java console had some debug text but I got no video:

Loaded UDPLinkFactory communication services
TransportHandlerImpl: Registering link [udp://host-84-9-158-90.bulldogdsl.com:8888]
Created broker URI udp://host-84-9-158-90.bulldogdsl.com:8888
End point Id= 1803862611
  - Subscried to the topic: 9
  - Waiting for video stream to arrive....
The number of links is increased to 1

Following Raz’s instructions on IRC I rebooted again and ran jmfinit.exe to detect my webcam the program stalled at “Looking for video capture devices”. The last lines in the cmd window said:

Found device Micrososft WDM Image Capture (Win32)
Querying device. Please wait...

After 15 minutes I gave up, seems there is a problem with JMF and my webcam.

Went to Video JMS and successfully subscribed to MABs webcam. Why is mjeg in the cam list when I don’t have a webcam - only published cams should be in that list?

By the end of the test session I had chatted to people via the chat client and had subscribed to up to 3 simultaneous webcams. I managed to nab a screen shot the portlet working.

Things I think would be cool:

When you put the port number and IP in and hit connect go straight into the chat window so you can start talking.
“Enter” to send messages - like most chat clients.
New messages automatically appear rather than needing receive.
A user list so you can see who is in the chat (like IRC).
Have the client remember your connection settings from last time.