Chaton is a free self-hosted 1 on 1 P2P video chat room that you can use. Here you can host it on a server or even run it locally on the server of your organization. It lets you instantly join a video call and you can create many video rooms on it. This is a lightweight tool as well and you can easily deploy on a server or VPS by running few simple commands. This is completely open source and if you are a programmer or something like that then you can also take part in its development.
There are many online video meeting tools that you can use without any registration, but this one here is self-hosted that you can run or deploy on your end. The joiners can join the meeting instantly and the video meeting that you create can go on for as long as you want. This is as simple as that. The main UI is simple and there are only two options; one for creating a room and the other is for joining a room. Entry to the room is via pin so you only have to share that with the other person whom you want to chat with.
Free Self Hosted 1:1 P2P Video Chat Room: Chaton
Getting started with Chaton is simple as you only have to get the source code from GitHub and then install it. To install it on a server, you only need Node.js with Firebase on your PC. Also, you will have to create a Firebase configuration and then create a .env file in the root of the repository. You can clone the Chaton repo from here and then you can simply cd into it. See the commands to do that below.
git clone https://github.com/pyxel-dev/chaton cd chaton
Now, you just run the command to install the dependencies and then you will all good to go. After it finishes installing the installing, you can just start the server. Make sure that you have added the Firebase configuration precisely or the app won’t work.
npm install
At this time, the app is ready to start. Just issue the following command and then access the app’s UI can be used at localhost:1234. You can see that in the screenshot below.
npm start
Now when the app has started, you can create a room and invite anyone by sharing the code. The video room that you have created here will live for as long as you want. And if you don’t want to get in to all the installation process then you can try the online hosted version from the developer itself. It has all the features but this will not always be available.
In this way, you can use this simple and powerful app to host 1 on 1 video meetings with ease. You just run those commands that I have mentioned above on the server or PC. You can also use this in a local organizational server of your company in the same way.
Closing thoughts
If you are looking for a simple 1 on 1 video chatting app that you can self-host then Chaton is good. It even works flawlessly in the mobile browser as well. Just install it on a server or use the online hosted version if you want. The meetings are instant without any registration or anything like that. I liked the simplicity of the app and you just try it and let me know what you think.
