Multimedia Computing Project 2

Habla - A Simple Audioconference

Due date: March 15th

Index

Overview
Details
Hints
Hand In

Overview

An audioconference, or internet phone, allows people to talk to each other from computers connected across a network. Although networked computers have been able to do audio well for over 10 years, the explosive growth of the World-Wide Web has fueled interest in the Internet and in it, interest in Internet telephony.

For this project, you are to write a basic two-person audioconference, named Habla and explore how some basic system parameters effect the quality of the audio stream. Habla will incorporate speech detection, directly from your project 1, to avoid sending unnecessary silent packets onto the network.

Habla can have a minimal user interface, but needs to support some command line parameters (or basic menu interface) to allow varying of system parameters. You are free to add any additional features as you would like.

Details

Habla must run on either Microsoft Windows or Linux. You will have to get it working on two machines, actually.

Habla will use standard Internet sockets to make connections between the audioconference processes. From any Internet host, a user running Habla should be able to connect to another user running Habla from any other Internet host, so you need a way to specify the hosts at run-time. You may wish to make the port numbers to which they connect dynamic, too, but that is optional.

Habla must support both TCP and UDP sockets. You can have a default connection type, but there should be a way the user can specify the socket type when Habla starts.

Habla should support a variety of samples intervals. Typical audioconferences sample the audio device every 20, 40 or 60 ms in order to keep latency low. You may choose one of these for the default, but must then provide a means to specify alternate sample sizes (up to a second) when Habla starts. Running Habla at larger sample intervals will give you some insight in how latency makes interactive communication difficult. (You will test this in project 2b).

Habla can enable basic speech detection if indicated at run-time. Since the size of your speech chunks will likely be much smaller than the sample interval you used in project 1, searching backward (or forward) for a zero-level crossing rate for 250ms is not practical. Thus, you can detect speech based on energy levels only. You can tune your speech detection threshold to work well in your environment. See computeEnergy.c and getThresh.c for one such example.

In order to evaluate how Internet packet loss affects audio, Habla must be able to randomly drop packets it receives. Loss should be done on a packet level and at various rates when Habla starts. (You will test this in project 2b.)

Hints

There are many different architectural solutions you can have for your Habla.

Basic speech detection using energy level only: computeEnergy.c and getThresh.c

(And in case some of you are wondering, the word Habla comes from Spanish and means "speech".

Windows Implementation

You may do your implementation in Linux or Windows. This sub-section has some Windows-specific hints.

Here is some sample code showing system calls that you may find helpful. Some must be used while others may be used depending upon your implementation:

A simple header file to generate error messages for Winsock errors: sockerr.h
Basic TCP sockets: tcp-talk.cpp, tcp-listen.cpp
Basic UDP sockets: udp-talk.cpp, udp-listen.cpp
Get the IP address of a host: getIPaddress.cpp

Linux Implementation

You may do your implementation in Linux or Windows. This sub-section has some Linux-specific hints.

Here is some sample code showing system calls that you may find helpful. Some must be used while others may be used depending upon your implementation:

Basic TCP sockets: talk-tcp.c, listen-tcp.c
Basic UDP sockets: talk-udp.c, listen-udp.c
Setting a timer: setitimer.c
Using POSIX threads: add2.c - add and subtract to an variable protected by a mutex (compile with -lpthread)
Allowing multiple interrupts: select.c
Parsing command line parameters: get-opt.c

All of the above sample calls work in Linux but may work in other environments, especially Unix environments, as well.

Use the man command to find out additional information on the system calls used.

Hand In

You must turn in:

all source code used in your project, including header files. Please include a Makefile, too, for building your code.
a README file with any special instructions or platform requirements for running your application. Be especially careful to provide details on how to start Habla and change the system parameters. Provide some examples, even, if that would help.

Tar up (with gzip) your files, for example:

    mkdir proj2
    cp * proj2  /* copy all your files to submit to proj2 directory */
    tar -czf proj2.tgz proj2

then attach proj2.tgz to an email with "cs525_proj2" as the subject.

You must turn in all source code used in your project, including header files. Please include the project files required for building your code. Have a README file with any special instructions or platform requirements for running your application.

Please include a file named "group.txt" which contains the following:

    login_name1  last_name1, first_name1
    login_name2  last_name2, first_name2

You will use the online turnin program (/cs/bin/turnin) to submit your files:

Package up (with pkzip) your files, for example:

   mkdir proj2
   copy * proj2  /* copy all your files to submit to proj2 directory */
   pkzip proj2.zip proj2

Copy the proj2.zip to your account on the ccc machines.
Run: /cs/bin/turnin submit cs525z proj2 proj2.zip to submit your files.

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Send all project questions to the TA mailing list: cs525z_ta@cs.wpi.edu.