Meetup-bot

Cool dudah for automating our Google-meet setup. It's designed to help set up video calls in medium-size meeting rooms by running on a PC connected to your projector/display and your existing webcam (we got inspired by our logitech meetup cam), eliminating the need to connect your personal PC, promoting Privacy and Ease of Use. It integrates into your existing Slack workspace and can be triggered by tagging @meetup in every public channel, followed by the action you want to perform: start call, stop call, status or help.

• When asked to start a call, the bot will do so and reply on the same channel (e.g. #general) with the link to join the meet, ready for all the other team members.
• a call can be started by every slack user, except for other bots and the same is true for stopping it.

When a message is posted with @meetup it triggers a zap in zapier.com that then sends a POST request to thinger.io forwarding the message text, its sender name and the channel it was posted in; this data is then redirected to the device on which the software is running where it will trigger the different actions. When a response is ready, it will be sent as a JSON to a webhook back on zapier.com where another zap will take its content and post it on Slack on the specified channel.

##System requirements

• Random mini PC, enough power to handle the video stream from the webcam, a Raspberry Pi 3 might even be enough
• Ubuntu 19, other versions may work but have not been tested yet
• Google chrome:
  • download from https://www.google.com/chrome/

  or

  • download with wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
  • install with sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

##Tools/Dependencies see Run It for an easy way to install all of them at the same time

• cmake
  • install with sudo apt install cmake
• git https://git-scm.com/
  • install with sudo apt-get install git
• xdotool: https://github.com/jordansissel/xdotool
  • install with sudo apt-get install xdotool
• g++ / gcc compiler: https://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/
  • install with sudo apt-get install build-essential
• libCURL https://curl.haxx.se/
  • install with apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev
• cJSON https://github.com/DaveGamble/cJSON
  • download with git clone https://github.com/DaveGamble/cJSON
  • open the downloaded folder with cd cJSON
  • create a build directory mkdir build
  • open the new directory cd build
  • set building options cmake .. -DENABLE_CJSON_UTILS=On -DENABLE_CJSON_TEST=Off -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
  • compie make
  • instal sudo make DESTDIR=$pkgdir install

External services

• G-Suite:
  • Create a new account
  • Log into Google Chrome on your device
  • Make sure meet.google.com can access your webcam and microphone
• Thinger: https://thinger.io/
  • Create a new account or log into your existing account, note your user-name
  • Go to devices > Add Device
  • Choose a Device ID and note it
  • Input a random description
  • click to Generate Random Credential and note it
  • Save by clicking Add device
• Zapier: https://zapier.com

  • Create a new account or log-in your existing account

  • create a zap that will forward messages from slack to our bot via thinger

    • click on Make a new zap
    • Search for Slack and select it as your trigger app
    • Select New Mention as your trigger action
    • Connect a slack account from your Workspace
    • Edit options selecting @meetup for your User Name
    • Test/Skip then Add an action step using the webhooks by zapier app
    • Create a POST request
    • Edit with
      • URL : https://api.thinger.io/v2/users/YOUR_THINGER_USER_NAME/devices/meetup/new-message
      • Payload Type: JSON
      • Data: userName = User Real Name, text = Text, channelName = Channel Name, channelID = Channel ID
      • Headers: Content-Type = application/json, Authorization = Your device credential
    • launch the script (See Run It) and test, it should do things without being able to send a response

  • create a zap that will recive HTTP requests and convert them into Slack messages

    • click on Make a new zap
    • Search for Webhooks by zapier and select it as your trigger app and elect Catch Hook as the trigger
    • Choose Slack as the action app, then send channel message
    • test by sending a new message like ciao @meetup while the script is running, then add an action step
    • you should already be logged in your slack workspace
    • Edit your template with:
      • Channel : use a custom value (advanced)
      • Custom channel ID: channelID from Step 1
      • Message Text: Text from Step 1
      • Bot Name: User Name from Step 1
    • Test & save

Run it

• open a new terminal window by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T
• download the project by typing git clone https://github.com/mondora-labs/meetup-bot
• open the project folder cd meetup-bot
• configure your account settings:
  • open the configuration file nano settings.txt, remember to leave the space between = and your data
  • replace YOUR_USER_ID with your thinger user name
  • replace YOUR_DEVICE_ID with the ID of the device you created
  • replace YOUR_DEVICE_CREDENTIAL with the credentials of the device you created
  • replace YOUR_ZAPIER_HOOK with the URL you got from zapier.
  • close the editor with Ctrl + X and press Y then Enter to save changes
• add permissions to the scripts with chmod a=rwx *.sh
• install all the required tools/libraries with ./install.sh
• Build image with g++ -o meetup ./main.cpp -lcurl -lcjson
• Run with ./meetup
• Test & enjoy

Usage & commands

Insert @Meetup in whatever message on Slack to have it forwarded to the meetup bot and analyzed, your message may contain other key words (begin, stop, status ...), even in sparse order, to tell the bot what to do, otherwise it will just answer as if it was asked for help

• begin, start, inizia can be used to start a new call. If one is already running, you will be asked if you want to stop it before being able to start a new one.
• stop, kill, termina, chiudi can be used by every user to stop a call, even if it was started by someone else. If there is no call running, no changes will be made.
• status, stato will respond by telling you whether there is a call already running and, in case there is one, will let you know the link to join and who started it
• help will hopefully help you by stating the available commands.