Beaming

Beaming is an iOS app that makes small group discussions more accessible for deaf and hard-of-hearing participants.

In a Beaming session, everyone places their iPhone face-down on the table. When someone speaks, their phone's flashlight blinks, so a deaf participant can see at a glance who is talking. Deaf participants also get a live transcription of the conversation on their screen. Everything runs over the local network — no internet connection, cloud service, or account is required.

Built for the Apple Developer Academy C4 — Urban Innovation Challenge.

How it works

• Create or join a room. A host starts a discussion and shares a QR code; others scan it to join (up to 8 people).
• Place the phone face-down. The screen turns off to save battery while the flashlight stays ready.
• Speak, and your light blinks. A shared "speaker lock" makes sure only the current speaker's flashlight is on. When two people talk at once, the loudest signal wins.
• Read along. Deaf participants see a live, speaker-labelled transcript.
• Keep going if the host leaves. The host role is handed off to the next participant automatically.

Roles

• Teman Tuli (Deaf) — sees the live transcript and the light cues.
• Teman Dengar (Hearing) — contributes their voice; their phone blinks when they speak.

Tech stack

• UI: SwiftUI (iOS 26+)
• Networking: Apple Network.framework with Bonjour (mDNS) peer discovery — fully local, peer-to-peer
• Audio: AVFoundation (microphone level detection for the speaker lock + calibration)
• Speech: SFSpeechRecognizer for live transcription (on-device)
• Motion: CoreMotion for face-down detection
• Camera: AVFoundation for QR scanning
• Architecture: MVVM using Swift Observation (@Observable)

Getting started

1. Open Beaming.xcodeproj in Xcode (Xcode 26+).
2. Choose an iOS simulator or a physical device.
3. Run the Beaming scheme.
4. On first launch, enter a name and pick a role, then grant the requested permissions (microphone, speech recognition, camera).
5. To test a multi-device session, run on two devices (or a device + simulator) on the same Wi-Fi.

Permissions are unified on the Home screen. Granting microphone, speech recognition, and camera there means you won't be prompted again mid-session.

Project structure

Beaming/
├── View/            SwiftUI screens (Home, Meeting, Calibration, Onboarding, …)
├── ViewModel/       @Observable view models + managers (Network, Audio, Flashlight, …)
└── Model/           Data types (User, Room, AppState, network messages, …)

Branching

• main — stable releases
• dev/* — feature work in progress

Acknowledgments

Built by the Beaming team at the Apple Developer Academy. Thanks to the deaf community members who shaped the design through their feedback.