Amazon Chime SDK Setup for Web and App Based Application

Overview

The Amazon Chime SDK is a collection of client software development kits that use resources in your AWS account to make it easy to add features of audio calling, video calling, and screen sharing to your web or mobile applications.

For example, Amazon Chime SDK can be integrated into any ed-tech application so that students can use the video chat feature to ask in-depth questions regarding an assignment or any other topic they may be struggling with. Amazon Chime SDK removes some of the complexity from developing, particularly in terms of communication services.

Features of Amazon Chime SDK

• It costs based on the number of minutes attendees are there in the meeting.
• End-to-end encrypted communication (AES 256).
• It is having the capability of screen sharing.
• It is having capacity of 250 concurrent meetings (this number can be increased if required).
• Maximum of 250 attendees can join each meeting.
• Capacity of 250 audio participants and 16 video participants in each meeting.
• It can be easily integrated into Web-based, App-based, and iOS-based applications.

Amazon Chime SDK setup for web-based application

• AWS Account
• Node JS
• Ruby
• AWS CLI – The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is an open-source tool that enables you to interact with AWS services using commands in your command-line shell.
• SAM CLI – The AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM) is an open-source framework that you can use to build a serverless application on AWS.

Step-by-Step guide for Web-based Amazon Chime SDK

1. Configure the AWS account to AWS CLI.
2. Clone this AWS official repository Amazon-Chime-SDK-Web-Based. and open the code in VS-Code Application.
3. Open the terminal of vs-code and go to the below folder –

4. Now execute the command –

Now the serverless setup will create an AWS account that is configured.

From the AWS console, we can see that S3 Bucket and a CloudFormation stack are created. Lots of resources will create by CloudFormation. When it is successfully created, In the output section we can see the API endpoint.

5. Open the API endpoint URL to see the User Interface for creating the meeting

6. Enter the meeting title, and name and select the region to create the meeting.

7. When a meeting is successfully created you can check an item is created in the Dynamo-DB table having all the data related to the meeting.

Amazon Chime SDK Setup for Android Application

1. Clone this AWS official repository Amazon-Chime-SDK-Android and open the code in Android Studio.
2. Download the following zip file and extract it.

amazon-chime-sdk-0.17.9.tar.gz

amazon-chime-sdk-media-0.17.10.tar.gz

amazon-chime-sdk-machine-learning-0.1.0.tar.gz

3. Create a folder named “libs” in this location (amazon-chime-sdk-android-master/amazon-chime-sdk/ ) and move all three aar files which are inside the downloaded files to this “libs” folder.
4. Open the “strings.xml” file which can be found at this location ( amazon-chime-sdk-android-master\amazon-chime-sdk\src\main\res\values\strings.xml ) and paste the API endpoint (The endpoint which is created in the output section of cloud formation template of web-based setup ) in test_url string.

5. Now connect the android device to android studio and launch the app.
6. When the app is successfully launched open the app on your connected android device. Enter the Meeting Id or title and name to create a meeting.

Conclusion

Setting up real-time communication components within a web or mobile application is made simple by the Amazon Chime SDK. The need for video conferencing solutions has increased as a result of the recent COVID-19 outbreak. Many organizations and customers now prefer video conferencing as their primary means of communication. It is practically impossible to set up a video conferencing feature from scratch in a short amount of time. Because of this, plug-and-play methods for adding real-time communication components, such as those provided by Amazon Chime SDK, have been gaining popularity.

About CloudThat