Stop scrolling. Start meeting. Connect with your neighborhood in real-time.
Norby is a hyper-local, privacy-first, real-time social discovery platform designed to cure digital isolation by bringing neighborhoods together through ephemeral coordination.
Existing social networks connect us to the world but disconnect us from our immediate surroundings. Norby bridges the gap by focusing purely on physical proximity and real-world meetups.
Imagine sitting at a local coffee shop wanting to play chess, study, or grab a drink, but none of your contacts are free. Instead of scrolling social feeds, you open Norby:
- You see other active neighbors on your live radar.
- You drop a Hotspot Room at your location (e.g., “Chess & Coffee ☕”).
- Nearby users see your hotspot, request to join, and chat to coordinate.
- Within minutes, you meet up in person. An hour later, the chat history vanishes completely.
- Interactive Radar: Integrates React Leaflet for interactive map rendering. Shows nearby users and group hotspots within your custom radar range (e.g., 5km to 25km).
- Vibe Emojis & Custom Profiles: Choose an avatar, write a short bio, pick interest tags (e.g.
coding,music,coffee), and set a dynamic vibe emoji that displays directly on your map pin.
- Join Requests & Host Moderation: Hotspots are private by default. Strangers request access, and the host approves or declines them.
- Transient Chatrooms: Secure coordinates chatroom automatically created for members. All messages vanish 1 hour after transmission.
- Walk Navigation Routing: Calculates walking/driving distance, ETA, and draws an interactive route line on the map using OpenStreetMap routing engines.
- Physical Meetup Safety & SOS: Provides safety checklists and a one-tap GPS SOS share button to send your live coordinates to trusted contacts when meeting in person.
- 1-to-1 Calls: Low-latency peer-to-peer voice calling directly inside direct messages. Includes ringtone audio and clean floating caller widgets.
- Live Audio Spaces: Hosts can start spatial audio broadcasts in Hotspot Rooms. Participants can request to speak, and hosts can manage speaking permissions in real time.
- Smart Guide: Bee (
bee_ai_bot) is a witty, sarcastic Gen-Z AI companion powered byopenai/gpt-4o-minivia Puter AI. - Gated Map Awareness: Bee has access to coordinates, nearby active hotspots, and active users. She is strictly gated to only share this information if you explicitly ask, keeping normal chat bubbles natural.
- On-Demand Image Generation: Generates images from Unsplash or avatars from Dicebear using clean markdown formatting when asked.
- Stable Grid Offset Masking: Protects exact locations by deterministic shifting. It keeps your house number hidden in a 500m cell size while rendering a stable pin.
- GPS Battery-Saver Stasis Loop: Suspends active GPS polling if you stay in the same place for 3 minutes, saving battery life. Instantly wakes up on map interaction or physical movement.
Let's trace how two neighbors, Aria and Liam, connect for a coding session:
sequenceDiagram
autonumber
actor Aria as Aria (Host)
actor Liam as Liam (Guest)
participant Server as WebSocket Server
participant Redis as Redis Cache
Aria->>Server: Create Hotspot "Code & Coffee ☕"
Server->>Redis: Store Hotspot Lat/Lng (Set expiration to 2h)
Server-->>Liam: Broadcast new Hotspot on Radar Map
Liam->>Server: Request to Join Hotspot
Server-->>Aria: Show "Liam wants to join" Join Request toast
Aria->>Server: Approve Liam's request
Server-->>Liam: Unlock Hotspot Chatroom & Route
Liam->>Server: Start voice call (WebRTC) to coordinate table location
Server->>Liam: Handshake WebRTC signaling
Aria->>Liam: "Hey! I'm by the window in the green hoodie."
Note over Aria,Liam: Meet in person, code together!
Note over Redis: Hotspot expires, all chat messages deleted from Redis
Norby utilizes a decoupled frontend client, a standalone WebSocket signaling server, and a high-performance Redis cache layer.
graph TD
Client[Next.js Client App] <-->|WebSockets JSON| Server[Node.js WebSocket Server]
Server <-->|Geo Queries & Hashes| Redis[(Redis Pub/Sub & KV)]
Client -->|OSM Places Queries| Overpass[Overpass OSM API]
Client -->|Walking Routes| OSRM[OSRM Routing Server]
norby:user_locations(Sorted Set / Geohash): Holds geolocation indices of all active users.norby:active_users(Hash): Stores serialized user profiles mapped byuser_id.norby:hotspots(Hash): Stores active hotspot properties, host details, and guest rosters.
To prevent UI lagging and server hammering, the server schedules coordinate broadcasts at a static 3-second cycle. Location updates are stored immediately in Redis, and batch frames are sent down to active connections.
- Node.js (v18 or higher)
- Redis (local instance or cloud Redis server)
Clone the repository and install dependencies:
git clone https://github.com/gitsofaryan/norby.git
cd norby
npm installCreate a .env.local file in the root directory:
NEXT_PUBLIC_WS_URL=ws://localhost:3001
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379Start the Next.js frontend and the WebSocket backend concurrently:
npm run dev- Frontend Dashboard: http://localhost:3000
- WebSocket Server: Running on port
3001
Norby uses Vitest for unit and integration testing:
npm run test:runWe welcome contributions from the developer community!
Tip
Pull requests that fix high-impact bugs, improve geolocation caching, or add voice filtering are eligible for rewards up to ₹250 per merged PR. Read CONTRIBUTING.md for full guidelines.