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I'm trying to find out if the Pi could work for a Google+ Hangout. I'm guessing no but wondering if anyone is trying to get it to work. Will the new webcam version make it easier? We want to set up a dedicated Pi station for people to do Google hangouts.

Ghanima
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pfhyper
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    This is an awesome idea. – Jivings Feb 11 '13 at 23:09
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    It could be possible with HTML5, Video and some Webcam plugin ( i dare say Java) But there needs to be an API or Driver avialble for the video feed. You can try and get something like YAWCAM to work on the Pi? Then you one foot in the door. But that is more a standalone webpage. You still need to integrate into the Googel Hangout API somehow? Good luck – Piotr Kula Feb 11 '13 at 23:26
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    are you trying to use PI to host your hangouts or be a headless video/audio participant of hosted hangouts? no. 1 is done fairly easy; no. 2 could be a problem. If you attempt to use hangout for the first time with Chrome, it will ask you to install audio/video plugin, given that I am assuming this is not going to be a one-liner to do with HTML5. Besides, USB webcams with RPI will be giving you ~10fps which is far behind most user's expectations so you may want to wait for the RPI camera for smooth picture. – abolotnov Feb 12 '13 at 13:44

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Just a heads up that the Pi lacks audio in; you'll need a USB sound card. You can pick one up from somewhere like Amazon though - for a G+ hangout, even the really cheap ones will be fine.

anaximander
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    so does it lack video in :) I guess they will be using a web cam anyway and there its mic comes handy. – abolotnov Feb 12 '13 at 13:34
  • The question mentioned using the upcoming RPi camera for video in; just pointing out that this solution doesn't allow for sound. I would've posted it as a comment, but apparently I can't post comments yet. – anaximander Feb 12 '13 at 13:46
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    Many webcams have mics, too. And there are video digitizers with stereo audio, composite and svideo inputs in one box that you could use to attach analogue kit. – XTL Feb 13 '13 at 07:54
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I spent a day trying to use Google Hangouts. I firstly tried installing Chromium OS V0.5. This booted to a black screen on my RPi2. From all reports I'm not alone with this… it's pretty buggy.

I then installed Raspbian, and the Chromium browser. Hangouts works fine, but I was experiencing ~0.5 second audio lag and asynchronous ~1–1.5 second video lag, so I gave up. Apparently this lag is also common. I'm fairly sure Hangouts is decentralised/P2P, but I experienced this lag even on the same intranet.

As an addendum:

  • Skype is not available for the Pi. There is no ARM build, and the web version doesn't offer a Linux plugin for video chat.
  • Jitsi isn't available in Raspbian either (missing dependencies), and it's always been super-glitchy for me on my normal computer anyway.
  • I trialled Ekiga on my normal computer, and the quality was so terrible that I didn't even trial it on the Pi (although it installed fine).
Sparhawk
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Install Google's Chromium Browser on the Raspberry Pi:

apt-get install -y chromium-browser

Then, using this, browse to http://hangouts.google.com

Worked for me after a firmware upgrade (https://github.com/guysoft/OctoPi/issues/267) on a Pi 2 B+.

tlhIngan
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Graham
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