AngelThump

Yo

I hope you guys are doing well and I thank you guys and gals for the continued support on AngelThump!

The biggest update for patreon is the ability to use twitch chat on your channel page when you are the broadcaster tier ($10) instead of broadcaster pro ($30). If you think it should be free or lower, please let me know.  I've been thinking of adding a chat service to the platform to try and grow the community, but I don't know if it is wanted or not.

I have unpublished the Broadcaster Pro tier for now because there is really no need for it until there are more features and I cannot think of any. So if you have any requests, I would happily take suggestions in discord or any way you can contact me! It helps fund AngelThump!

As far as performance of the site is doing, we have been getting a lot more viewers lately. Scaling the site has been problematic and a process, but it has certainly improved as we can handle more than in the past. It is very hard to rely on just one provider as so many problems can arise and we would have more providers, but it would require a lot more resources (CDNs are very expensive). As time goes on, it will keep improving, so bear with me! (KEEP IN MIND ITS A FREE SERVICE!)

I like to thank people just chilling and watching AngelThump. It really warms my heart that there are so many people on the site. As always if there is any feedback or questions, join the discord! I'd be happy to answer!

It's been awhile. Welcome to AngelThump v2!

Haven't really posted anything in a very, very long time, so I wanted to check in with some updates.

Over the past few months, I have been rewriting most of the core features to try and improve user experience. Check out our GitHub to see what changed. More things to be open sourced soon!

Video Backend

It was certainly hard with the service being limited on DigitalOcean as we can't have Point of Presences all over the globe. It could be possible to invest into a CDN once we hit a Patreon goal, but that is very far off.

Latency to broadcaster should be better. With the testing I have done, the best I could get was ~4 seconds. With LHLS coming soon, it could be even lower. So stay tune!

So much has changed over the past year and hopefully it will not buffer as much as before.

Frontend UI

The frontend is now completely rewritten into React. Let me know if you have any features you would like to request in Discord 

If you are a $30 Tier 3 Broadcaster, you will gain access to a chat feature! Link your patreon and twitch account to AngelThump, and you will gain access to a special channel page! https://angelthump.com/YOUR_CHANNEL

If there are any patreon-specific feature requests, please let me know in discord as well.

Lastly, I like to thank all of the supporters and the patrons staying with project. AngelThump would literally not be here without you guys.

As you know, I am the only maintainer for this project and I have very little Computer Science experience. The only CS class I have taken was in high school. It certainly has been a wild ride trying to figure out everything. This is just a hobby by the way :)

Thank you again,

Overpowered

Join the AngelThump discord for updates/support!

I haven't been updating much on patreon, but I usually post in discord. So if you are interested in updates/need support/or you simply want to chat, feel free to join! :)

https://discordapp.com/invite/QGrZXNh

Patron Incentives

What would you guys like to see? I would like some ideas so I can attract more patrons and offer more cool things for you guys instead of just a patreon server to watch on.

Link your accounts to AngelThump!

To make this work you to do the following:

* Be a $5 Patron or higher

* Create an AngelThump account https://www.angelthump.com/signup with the same email as your patreon email!

* Link your account through your dashboard or through this link! https://www.angelthump.com/patron

Then enjoy your new features such as the patron-only server and password-protecting your stream!

I don't have to check every account now! FeelsGoodMan! 

Password Protect Your Streams!

You can now password-protect your stream as long as you are a patron!

Head over to https://angelthump.com/dashboard/patreon to enable this today! You have to be email-verified and a patron!

In other news, I have added more edge servers and better ingest servers to help with the lag some of you faced. 

Most of the lag is pretty much gone, but I know some of you will still have problems. These said problems are not fixable on my end as the problem relies on how fast your internet is and how good your ISP's routing to the server. (using a vpn may help as it uses different routing)

Thank you again for the continued support. Will update you guys when I have more updates and news.

Report issues, ask questions, give suggestions, and help improve the site @ the AngelThump github : https://www.github.com/timisoverpowered/angelthump

Email Verification/Password Resets/ETC

It's been a very busy month for AngelThump. I have now added Email Verification/Password Resets to the site which is fucking fantastic because every functional site should have it. Unfortunately, I will have to wipe the database. :( boo hoo, you get a shit ton of features with this so fuck off.

ALL CURENT PATRONS PLEASE SEND ME A NEW DM WITH YOUR NEW USERNAME ON ANGELTHUMP AND EMAIL ON PATREON BY EMAIL/DGG/PATREON DM TO ACCESS THE SERVER ONCE AGAIN. (it may take up to a day because I need sleep)

Other minor changes: I added error pages and changed the look of the site (profile/dashboard will change in the following week(s)). Checkout the github for the full changes. https://github.com/timisoverpowered/angelthump 

If you want to suggest ideas for me to add onto AngelThump, please feel free to contact me/make an issue on github!  Thank you again to all my patrons for supporting AngelThump.

Things to do in the near future:

1. Streams on front page/directory or some sort idk

2. Healthchecking servers

Updates

$1 patrons will no longer be available for the patreon-only server. $5+ will be available for the patreon-only server. I made this change because I am not making enough money on patreon to pay all the AngelThump bills and I do not want to use my own money to pay the rest. I have other bills & expenses to take care of then to spend my money on a 'hobby'. Don't get me wrong, I would love to, but I am not made out of money.

I have been working hard on the site still. I have added numerous api changes on the site. You can check out the github for the changes. https://github.com/timisoverpowered/angelthump . I have exposed everyone streaming on the platform through this link. https://angelthump.com/api

Finally, I have updated the backend servers to handle lower latency HLS. You will see lower delays (6-10s delay) in streams. If you guys want to use flash player to view streams (1-2s delay), you can use this link: https://angelthump.com/embed-flash/(streamer)

Thank you again for supporting AngelThump, I will keep updating the site and improving the stream quality.

Things to do in the near future:

1. Email Verification/Password Resets

2. Show people streaming on front page

3. Improve backend servers (add more servers based on available money)

Upgraded to Feathers Auk

I have rewrote the AngelThump site to be inline with the new version of Feathers (Auk) which will help me bring in better features like password resets, email verification, etc. Those features will come in the next few days/weeks depending on how busy I will be.

I have also updated every dependency that is currently being used on the site/video player/rtmp servers. The only thing that will need to wait on is the new version of videojs 6 because most of the plugins that our video player uses is still in v5 of videojs.

If you have any requests or problems about anything, please feel free to dm me on DGG or on patreon. And as always thank you for the continued support.

Updates

Hey all,

I've been having more free time lately and I used that time to improve the site.  These changes are boring and not really appealing to the normies, but they do help in a way.

I have migrated the database and the webserver to seperate servers as they were all on one server with the NA-INGEST-SERVER. It is cheaper to have them on one server, but it should help with the load on the server.

I rewrote most of the AngelThump site while I was migrating it and it will again be rewrote when feathersjs update to 2.0.0. That will be exciting because there are going to be new features and that will help me finish other features like email-verification, password-resets, etc. This all can be seen on the github www.github.com/timisoverpowered/angelthump

I have added number of viewers via socket.io and it is only visble through the api as of right now. Maybe in the future, I will add it to the videojs player.

Thank you for all the support. I will update you guys in the coming weeks if anything major happens.

-Overpowered

The Future of AngelThump

AngelThump has been up for 7 months now and it has been great. If you guys didn't know, AngelThump didn't start as a streaming platform. It was so I can stream GOT without getting banned from USTREAM. I decided to expand the platform to the community and with the help of Cake and hephaestus, we started up AngelThump. 

There have been so many problems with the platform and I have fixed most of it. One of the biggest ongoing problem is: stability. Even with the immense support of patreon, building your own CDN on digitalocean is not going to cut it. I have been looking for CDN partners and they are way too expensive. I think it’s fair to say that we will not afford this kind of solution.

The site pulls more than 50TB/month just from you guys!!!! And for the most part, I have been so lucky. Digitalocean does not charge for bandwidth at this moment, however that can change in the near future. That would seal the deal for AngelThump because they charge $0.02 per GB after the 1TB limit per month. It would be better off paying for the CDN then go this route. I don't know what I will do when they start charging for overages, but we can just hope that they keep delaying this.

I am not closing AngelThump right now, but it can happen in the near future. Again, I am so grateful to all my patrons and donaters because without you guys, I would have closed this project a long time ago.

-Overpowered

Patreon server is up!

Good news guys! Patreon server is up and running. All you need to do is contact me via pm here or on the chat and sign up on the site @ www.AngelThump.com

Make sure you sign up on the site with the same EMAIL as your patreon email otherwise I cannot verify your identity.

Feel free to contact me with any problems.

Thanks again with the tremendous amount of support!

I will continue to update the site with new features and stability.

Update

I will start the donater server as soon as my finals are done. Finals are next week. So by next weekend, hopefully I will have more updates and see how I can implement this.

$100 goal & update for donator goals

We are almost at the $100 goal AngelThump! It will help me pay no costs for servers + other fees likes G-Suite (for emails) and AWS Geo-DNS costs (Helps direct you guys to different servers located close to you). Thanks for the help!

I am thinking of reworking the donator goals (for the tenth time). Instead of having a server for an individual server for $20, I am probably going to open up servers for $5 pledges and up. It will take some time to setup because it is a whole different system to tackle with. 

Thanks again for all the pledges!