ascii-chat 📸

ASCII video chat.

Probably the first command line video chat program.

It just prints ASCII, so it works on your rxvt-unicode in OpenBox, a Putty SSH session, and even iTerm or Kitty.app on macOS.

It even works in an initial UNIX login shell, i.e. the login shell that runs 'startx'.

Eventually it will support 3+ simultaneous people, 'google-hangouts' style, and sound via PulseAudio or something.

Dependencies

• Most people: apt-get install clang libopencv-dev libjpeg-dev
• ArchLinux masterrace: pacman -S clang opencv libjpeg-turbo
• macOS: brew install opencv@4 jpeg-turbo

Build and run

• Clone this repo onto a computer with a webcam.
• Install the dependencies.
• run make.
• run ./bin/server -p 90001 in one terminal, and then
• run ./bin/client -p 90001 in another.

Use make clean debug as you edit and test code.

Check the Makefile to see how it works.

Command line flags

NOTE: run ./bin/server -h to see these options

• -a --address: IPv4 address (default: 0.0.0.0)
• -p --port: TCP port (default: 90001)
• -x --width: Render width (default: 110) NOTE: unused right now, auto-calculated
• -y --height: Render height (default: 70) NOTE: unused right now, auto-calculated
• -c --webcam-index: Webcam device index (0-based, server only, default: 0)
• -f --webcam-flip: Horizontally flip image (server only, default: 1)
• -C --color: Enable colored ASCII output (server and client)
• -b --background-color: Enable background colored mode with contrasting text (server only)
• -h --help: Show help message

Usage

Start the server:

./bin/server [options]

Connect with a client:

./bin/client [options]

New Color Feature

You can now enable colored ASCII output that preserves the original colors from your webcam! Use the --color or -C flag:

Server with color:

./bin/server --color

Client with color:

./bin/client --color

The colored output uses ANSI escape codes to colorize each ASCII character based on the RGB values from the original webcam image, creating a much more vibrant and realistic representation.

TODO

• Client should continuously attempt to reconnect
• switch Client "-a/--address" option to "host" and make it accept domains as well as ipv4
• Colorize ASCII output
• Refactor image processing algorithms
• client reconnect logic
• terminal resize events
• client requests a frame size
• Client should gracefully handle frame width > term width
• Client should gracefully handle term resize event
• Compile to WASM/WASI and run in the browser

Notes

Performance Optimizations for Colored Mode:

• Color Quantization: Reduces 16M colors to 512 colors for smaller, more consistent frames
• Larger Buffers: More frame buffering to handle colored frame size variations
• Optimized Processing: Reduces frame drops and visual stutter

Note: Colored frames are approximately 3x larger than monochrome frames due *to the ANSI color codes. The system automatically adjusts the frame buffer size *accordingly:

• 1-16MB frame buffer (plus 8MB network buffers)