Show HN: MBCompass – Android Compass App (github.com)

In case you have seen my previous posts, this is an update for berb.app, a WebRTC file sharing app. My goal is simple: send files between devices in real-time without installing crap or uploading to any servers.

Comments (20)

satvikpendem · 1d ago

Are you familiar with Iroh's sendme?

https://github.com/n0-computer/sendme

goodpanda · 15h ago

This looks very interesting. I will def take a look. thx

Alifatisk · 20h ago

Is there a website for sendme? Or is this a cli tool?

satvikpendem · 17h ago

https://www.iroh.computer/sendme

howtofly · 1d ago

My understanding is that the signaling server could be used as the perfect place to perform MITM attack. The README does not mention how berb addresses this concern at all.

goodpanda · 15h ago

Oh I would love some more details if you think that's the case. With Berb only two clients can connect really. So let's say you somehow guess a peer ID, which is very tough, and connect to a random user. You can technically send a file but they can easily ignore it since they didn't initiate the transfer. That being said, I can definitely add a way to verify the file is legit like the suggestion in the reply with hashes.

notpushkin · 1d ago

Do you have a proposal? (Showing file hashes could help, perhaps?)

fabrice_d · 1d ago

Is it doing the ICE offer/answer exchange over websocket hosted on your server?

goodpanda · 15h ago

Yes, that's pretty much the only thing the server does. And maintain an in-memory state of connections. Room for improvement for sure.

globalnode · 1d ago

Im not a js programmer but index.js has the line: "Signaling server running on http://localhost:${PORT}" -- is that what you're talking about? I think you're talking about the initial connection right?

util.js also contains "copyToClipboard = (value) => {", not sure why that would be needed.

and googletagmanager for tracking error/diagnostics I think? its hard to understand this code without learning the language lol.

Also in privacy.html: "To initiate a peer-to-peer connection, Berb uses a temporary signaling server to exchange network metadata (such as IP addresses, session descriptions, and ICE candidates)."

goodpanda · 15h ago

Thx for the analysis! copyToClipboard is for copying the session link so it can be opened on your other device.

As for analytics, you are exactly right. I need to know if people are using the app the way it was intended and soon need to add more events for errors. Though perhaps it is something I can maintain on a separate repo? idk, the goal for me was to truly make everything on berb.app open source. no hiding anything

pwn0 · 1d ago

Very cool. Do you mind adding license and contributing information to the project?

goodpanda · 15h ago

Thx for the suggestion. Just added a license but don't really have a good contributing guideline yet. Would love to discuss any feature requests/bugs if you open an issue.

rapnie · 20h ago

A LICENSE file would be better, yes. But the package.json at least says it is ISC-licensed.

ranger_danger · 3h ago

> No servers

Except an impressively large amount of people in the world are behind symmetrical or CGNAT and would require a TURN server.

Because of this, I've personally never gotten a single p2p/WebRTC site to work with another person.

opengears · 20h ago

also check out localsend https://localsend.org/

goodpanda · 15h ago

This looks cool. However my goal with Berb is pretty much browser to browser only. Although if people keep asking for other features, I might consider a desktop/mobile app.

evbogue · 14h ago

Connecting browsers directly is a fascinting area to explore in web development. It always goes a little haywire when punching thru NAT and I wish there was more research into what the best methods are.

https://github.com/dmotz/trystero is a one tool I've used to build these kinds of apps.

koolala · 13h ago

Do you think the AT protocol could ever work for this? I wish we had one centeralized scriptable method that was popular to enable ubiquitous discovery.

evbogue · 10h ago

atproto would be a great pull request for Trystero come to think of it