Real-time Video Monitoring via WebRTC

Aug 29, 2023

With the addition of Callaba’s Video Calls, you can now set up makeshift remote monitoring practically on-the-go. All you need is smartphone or a laptop with a camera.

Video Calls in Callaba are completely private and secure.

We don’t have access to your server (whether in the cloud or self-hosted). And so we are not collecting any data about the contents of your video calls.

Why would you want to use real-time monitoring via WebRTC?

✅ Easy to set up. You can use any web/IP camera or even a camera on your smartphone.

✅ Control and remote supervision over important processes.

✅ Real-time monitoring and decision-making with WebRTC protocol.

✅ Video recording in the cloud.

What are we going to build

Before we begin, let’s take a moment to visualize what we are going to be building.

Important

For video calls to work across all browsers without them considering you unsafe, you will need :

domain name
SSL certificate

Luckily, in Callaba you can set all that via user interface. No SSH connection, no tinkering with the command console is required.

So let’s do it!

1. Set up "A" DNS record

1. First step is to create an “A” DNS record to associate your domain name with the IP address of your server.

You can add “A” DNS records in the DNS management interface of your domain registrar or DNS hosting provider.

If you are using a server in the cloud, make sure it has a permanent IP address. With AWS, you can associate an Elastic IP with your instance, it takes less than a minute to set up.

📖 How to set up Elastic IP address on AWS

Create a subdomain

1.1 Log in to your domain registrar's or DNS hosting provider's control panel.

Find the DNS management section or DNS settings in your account dashboard. This might be called something like "DNS Management," "DNS Settings," or "Manage Domains." and create an A record for your subdomain (for example, live.mywebsite.com).
Locate the option to add a subdomain. It might be under a section named "Subdomains," "Add Subdomain," or similar.

1.2 Enter the subdomain you want to create. For example, if you want to create a subdomain called live for your domain mywebsite.com your complete subdomain would be live.mywebsite.com.Save or create the subdomain.

Attention!

You will need to create different subdomains

for your main Domain name
for TURN domain name
for WebRTC domain name

Here you can take a look at the example setup of subdomains for TURN and WebRTC made in CloudFlare.

"A" DNS record

1.3 Point this A record to the static public IP address of your server. This step tells the DNS system that requests for live.mywebsite.com should be directed to your server's IP address.

Example: