December 2020 Summaries

The text explores the development of a wearable live captioning device using Azure Cognitive Services and Ably Realtime to help individuals with hearing impairments, like the author's mother, communicate more effectively when masks obscure lip reading and pronunciation cues. The project involves creating a web app that captures audio input from a microphone, transcribes it into text using Azure's speech recognition services, and then relays the text to a flexible LED display embedded in a wearable mask. The display uses neopixels connected to an Adafruit Feather Huzzah microcontroller, with messages communicated via the MQTT protocol facilitated by the Ably Javascript SDK. The app's design includes a pixel font to render text on the display, with considerations for hardware differences in LED matrix configurations, ensuring compatibility with various display setups. Additionally, a virtual simulator was developed to test the software before deployment on hardware, and the project is open-source, encouraging further development and innovation. The potential for language translation using Azure is also noted, and the author highlights the personal impact this technology had on his mother, emphasizing the broader benefits it could offer to others facing similar communication challenges.

On December 16, 2020, Pusher was acquired by MessageBird. MessageBird, an "Omnichannel Platform-as-a-Service" (OPaaS) company, plans to use Pusher for in-app notifications to enhance their communication platform. This acquisition signifies the growing demand for realtime technology and its importance in future growth. Pusher's abrupt closure of their Chatkit product earlier in 2020 left uncertainty about their direction. However, the acquisition by MessageBird has provided clarity, with Pusher's product set to remain independent for existing customers. The acquisition brings uncertainty for Pusher customers, as it's unclear whether Pusher will thrive or be absorbed into MessageBird. Ably, a realtime communication platform, has emerged as a reliable alternative for Pusher customers, supporting the Pusher protocol and easing the migration process. Ably offers a feature-complete realtime communication platform with a global edge network designed for dependable scale. It focuses on predictable performance, reliability, integrity, fault tolerance, and high availability. Ably is highly elastic, capable of dealing with both short-term spikes in demand and long-term growth as user bases scale. In conclusion, Ably provides an enterprise-grade solution for realtime communication, offering a reliable backup plan for companies uncertain about Pusher's future.

This article demonstrates how to use Airtable as a database for storing realtime messages in a group chat app using Ably's real-time infrastructure and WebHooks. The source code of the group chat app is written in VueJS, available on GitHub, and can be tested live at https://realtime-chat-storage.ably.dev/. Airtable is described as a flexible tool that combines features of task managers, databases, CRMs, spreadsheets, etc., into one product. It provides a simple REST API to perform basic CRUD operations on the data stored. The article also discusses Ably's real-time messaging infrastructure and WebHook Integration feature for integrating Airtable directly with an Ably app.

Realtime technology is transforming education as students and teachers demand seamless and instantaneous online interactions in their educational environment. Multi-user spaces such as virtual classrooms, anti-cheating tools for digital learning, digital assessment to preserve academic integrity, and device monitoring with live web filtering are some of the most impactful realtime use cases in EdTech. The case studies above just hint at the tip of the iceberg. The demand is irrefutable, but requires serious engineering and infrastructure discussions to deliver the solutions properly and at scale to the people in immediate need of them.

The global maritime shipping industry, responsible for over 90% of world trade and moving more than USD 4 trillion of goods annually, faces immense pressure to remain on schedule, protect cargo ships and crew, and ensure profitability. Realtime big data analytics can help navigate these challenges by providing immediate insights from the vast amounts of data generated by maritime companies. This technology enables better decision-making, improved efficiency in operations and logistics, fuel-efficient routing, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, realtime data supports ad hoc navigation to ensure companies maximize returns amidst unpredictable ocean weather conditions.

Ably has been developing tools to distribute open data sources such as transport systems and weather changes through the Ably Hub using their Ingester tool. They have created useful internal and external tools, but historically they haven't done much to convert the data into something more than its original structure. For transport sources defined by General Transit Feed Specification Realtime (GTFS-R), they have kept the data in the same structures. However, they are now working on a new Hub Product which would represent all transit sources in the same way and provide realtime updates for as many agencies as possible. They have developed a spatiotemporal representation of the data that can be restricted to certain geofenced regions, with the limit of a message’s data being either a max time or max region. This method was decided on as it strikes a good balance between message publish rate and granularity of information provided. They have also developed methods for predicting positions at set times and converting times and distances to positions. The result is a tool that can be scaled easily, with accurate positioning based on schedules and realtime updates, all while providing subscribers with fine-grained control over the data they're interested in.