v0.9 Beta
Electron Desktop App (you are here) | Python Backend For App | Python Library
Youtube video of a real stream transferring ~80KB/s of data
BitGlitter is an easy to desktop app that lets you embed data inside ordinary images or video. Store and host files wherever images and videos can be hosted. The carrier for data is the 'blocks' within the frames and not the file itself, and there are various measures to read imperfect distorted frames. What this means for you is streams are resistant to compression and distortion, and aren't broken by things such as format changes, metadata changes, etc. BitGlitter gives you a unique way to make your data more portable.
Barcodes and QR codes are everywhere. They embed binary data (0's and 1's) in them, symbolized as black and white. While they are pretty constrained in the real world, using them for digital transfer removes many of those limits. What if you could have multiple barcodes (frames), that if read sequentially could have the capacity of many thousands of individual ones? What if we added colors to the barcodes, so a given barcode could have 2x, 6x, 24x the capacity? What if we greatly increased the size of the frames to lets say the size of a standard 1080p video, so the frames once again increase their capacity by a couple orders of magnitude.
Combine all of these together, and you're able to move serious amounts of data. This is BitGlitter.
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Here are a few possible directions this can move in which would increase its usefulness and versatility:
- "Splash Screen": At the end of streams, include some cool looking rendered animation with the project logo, a brief explanation of what it is, and a URL to download the software. People not knowing what BitGlitter is will now have an idea as well as a way to download it, increasing usage and fueling development of the project. Could also include metadata about the stream itself.
- Inline streams: Have a stream embedded in another (non-BitGlitter) video, allowing for data to be read inside a normal, human-friendly video. Rather than taking up the full video screen, the stream could be a bar on the top or bottom of the screen, or any arbitrary shape (perhaps even animated). This allows content creators to 'attach' files to their videos, much like you can attach arbitrary files to an email.
- Moving heavy lifting away from Python: While libraries like
cv2andnumpyare used which utilize C++, pure Python is used in a few heavily used functions (thousands of times per second). Moving these to Rust or C++ would substantially speed up the software, and make new use cases possible... - Livestream capabilities: BitGlitter streams can be 'broadcast' over live video. Reader would be able to detect data streams through visual or audio cues from the multimedia, and can process/decode on the fly. BitGlitter streams are no longer restricted to 'static' files, but are open to any kind of live-streaming data, which can be optionally compressed/encrypted through the original feature set.
Let me know of your ideas and suggestions! There are many directions this technology can go in, and with enough interest your ideas can be future additions to this core library (as well as the desktop app). If you're looking to help with developing it.... awesome. All I ask is you're skilled with Python, and can write clean and structured code. I went out of my way to have clear variable and function names as well as a decent amount of comments scattered throughout the library- it should be relatively easy to get up to speed to understand how BitGlitter works underneath the hood.
Drop in and say hi on the Discord server:
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