Starting Your SignalWire Journey
Using the SignalWire Voice/Video/Chat SDKs and APIs there are numerous projects you can build. We’re here to help you start that journey.
Recently we announced our SignalWire Code Bounty program where we’ll give $500 to anyone who makes a unique and interesting application. We hope long time users of SignalWire and newcomers alike will participate. We want to reward and celebrate your creativity!
Whether you’re in the experienced or inexperienced camp, we’d like to help encourage some inspiration and give you the tools and resources you need to help build your project.
While SignalWire provides more than what can be broken up to simple categories, for the purposes of this post we’ll break it down to voice, video, messaging and chat!
Voice
The SignalWire platform provides powerful Voice APIs. Using our RELAY SDK you can quickly create Interactive Voice Response (IVR) automation. Essentially our tools allow you to programmatically build applications that can send and receive calls, play text to speech messages or audio files, receive user dial input, detect speech start and end, and much more.
We have comprehensive documentation that you can find here. We also have a number of guides posted to our developer portal as well. Such as building a fully functional call center.
What we’re looking for in a project submission to our code bounty program is something unique and interesting using these tools.
Start by experimenting with this simple example of using the SignalWire RELAY SDK to make an app that can receive calls through a SignalWire Phone Number and connect it to another phone number.
Once you get a taste for what you can do with SignalWire RELAY, you’ll want to dive even deeper. For example, you could use this example on creating a call translation and transcription service to create an automation that can serve people all over the world, regardless of what language they speak.
You can dive deep into the RELAY documentation to help you truly understand the scope of what can be done. The rest we leave up to you and your creativity.
Video
SignalWire provides a number of paths to dive into usage of our Video services.
You can use Programmable Video Communication if you would like something out of the box with customizability. PVC rooms can be embedded into any web app. The examples provided in the previous link demonstrate how to do things like using Javascript to blur or replace the background of a camera feed and track how long each participant speaks for.
Or you can use our examples on using the Video SDK to build a full video conferencing application with absolute granular control over every feature. You can even enable room previews so that you can allow users to see whats going on in a room before joining.
We also have a step by step set of instructions that will walk you through building a Zoom clone using React. It will help you understand how to create rooms, mute audio/video, change layouts, create custom overlays, and much more.
Messaging
In the same way SignalWire RELAY makes it easy to make voice calls, the same can be said about messaging. Check out our documentation on how to send and receive SMS.
Chat
Earlier this year we released an SDK for adding chat to your applications. All you need is a SignalWire Space, your credentials, and Javascript. In a few lines you can easily add two way messaging for any use along with chat history.
While this is generally used for typical text chat, it can be used as an arbitrary data channel. Imagine combining this with our Video or Voice services to create interactive experiences — like collaborative games or sending realtime data from sensors to overlay over video.
What next?!
With so many APIs and SDKs to choose from, there are endless possibilities of what can be built using the SignalWire platform. Video, voice, and chat don’t have to be complicated things to add to an application. Through making it easier for developers we hope that it enables you to go above and beyond your own expectations.
Heres a list of the guides mentioned and a few others:
