14

I'm trying to find out if the Pi could work for a Google+ Hangout. I'm guessing no but wondering if anyone is trying to get it to work. Will the new webcam version make it easier? We want to set up a dedicated Pi station for people to do Google hangouts.

Ghanima
  • 15,958
  • 17
  • 65
  • 125
pfhyper
  • 141
  • 1
  • 1
  • 4

3 Answers3

2

Just a heads up that the Pi lacks audio in; you'll need a USB sound card. You can pick one up from somewhere like Amazon though - for a G+ hangout, even the really cheap ones will be fine.

anaximander
  • 223
  • 3
  • 9
0

I spent a day trying to use Google Hangouts. I firstly tried installing Chromium OS V0.5. This booted to a black screen on my RPi2. From all reports I'm not alone with this… it's pretty buggy.

I then installed Raspbian, and the Chromium browser. Hangouts works fine, but I was experiencing ~0.5 second audio lag and asynchronous ~1–1.5 second video lag, so I gave up. Apparently this lag is also common. I'm fairly sure Hangouts is decentralised/P2P, but I experienced this lag even on the same intranet.

As an addendum:

  • Skype is not available for the Pi. There is no ARM build, and the web version doesn't offer a Linux plugin for video chat.
  • Jitsi isn't available in Raspbian either (missing dependencies), and it's always been super-glitchy for me on my normal computer anyway.
  • I trialled Ekiga on my normal computer, and the quality was so terrible that I didn't even trial it on the Pi (although it installed fine).
Sparhawk
  • 683
  • 4
  • 18
  • 34
0

Install Google's Chromium Browser on the Raspberry Pi:

apt-get install -y chromium-browser

Then, using this, browse to http://hangouts.google.com

Worked for me after a firmware upgrade (https://github.com/guysoft/OctoPi/issues/267) on a Pi 2 B+.

tlhIngan
  • 3,372
  • 5
  • 21
  • 33
Graham
  • 1