
Show HN: Hyperlax.tv – a real-time feed of Instagram's latest Hyperlapse videos - tbird24
http://hyperlax.tv/
======
e12e
Nice project! Was actually hoping for something a little different; I've
thought about having 4k streams with (local) ambient audio from around the
world for use as virtual "windows". Just hang a 4k tv on a wall, and play a
location/timezone that suits your mood... (Perhaps with a 24h buffer, so that
one could match relative sun height/light to local time if one wants to...).

Would be interesting to see an accompanying technical write-up (choice of
technologies, frameworks, rationale -- what was easy, what was hard etc).

Nice use-case for soundcloud, btw.

~~~
tbird24
You and I are on the same page, I love your idea too. This is my very first
project, I'm entirely new to coding, but hopefully eventually I can extend
Hyperlax to what you're talking about. Appreciate you checking it out!

~~~
gvr
Neat project!

Last christmas in SF I wanted to create a "winter vibe" as we were celebrating
with the family, and I was looking for videos showing cozy snowfall and winter
landscapes. It was surprisingly hard to find something really good. I think
it'd be cool if you could select what kind of "window" you want and had a few
presets like "Tropical", "Winter landscape", etc.

I personally found the mix of soothing slow music and hyper lapse videos to
not be relaxing, I think I'd prefer if the videos were running at normal speed
or maybe even in slow motion depending on the video.

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tbird24
Really excited to share a personal project I've been working on here. If you
check it out, I'd love to know what you think.

Enjoy a peek into the lives of others, from locations around the world.
Hyperlax is meant to be a bit of an escape, a bit voyueristic, a bit relaxing.
I think it's mesmerising. Maybe you will too!

~~~
Zekio
Like it!

Though personally i would probably not have used A tag in the navigation, so
you don't get the Dashed outline if you click them, since its not a new page
that loads, but otherwise I really like it. Bookmarked :)

EDIT: actually the A tags could just get the css rule (Outline: none;)

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tbird24
thanks for the feedback! Weird, I don't get the outline myself. I believe I
did use outline:none; but I'll double check. What browser are you using?

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Zekio
It could be my browser, since i am using Firefox developer edition 40.0a2

Edit: btw, thanks for sharing site, its awesome watching people race down the
highway and changing lanes in hyperlapse to relaxing music :)

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SwellJoe
I can't be the only one who pronounced this in my head as "hyper laxative".

~~~
madaxe_again
You're not.

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branchless
All the grainy videos with this type of music is reminiscent of a Boards of
Canada video. It's cool.

edit: to add, just watching the location tab is amazing, really gives an
exciting sense of the world buzzing with activity. Plus I just saw where I
live and cycle most days!

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sova
you nailed it. This is boards of canada!

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Erwin
Something similar from Uniqlo (the clothing company!) with interesting
Japanese scenes:
[http://www.uniqlo.com/calendar/](http://www.uniqlo.com/calendar/)

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lifeformed
What's supposed to happen? All I see is a big photo of a kid, and a music
player that isn't making any sound.

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tbird24
Hhmm. Do you see a big button that says "Let's Go!"? If not, you may have
flash blocked/disabled. LMK what browser you're using. Really sorry about
that. Promise it's worth it!

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jfoutz
Chrome - had flashblock on, but after enabling flash, still won't go. (hope
this helps)

    
    
        this IS supported
        2app.js:188 videos and songs not loaded
        app.js:651 Object {duration: 122208325, release_day: null, permalink_url:    "http://soundcloud.com/chillcall/sets/chill", genre: null, permalink: "chill"…}
        3app.js:188 videos and songs not loaded
        app.js:332 [Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object]
        app.js:452 https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xfa1/t50.2886-16/11682449_1595073700750452_1384791478_n.mp4
        app.js:466 hidden video link: https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xaf1/t50.2886-16/11684410_1604272313181065_1563724192_n.mp4
        app.js:309 content initialized
        2app.js:188 videos and songs not loaded
        app.js:236 video has been paused!
        163app.js:188 videos and songs not loaded

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pierrec
Really mesmerizing! I've actually been watching Hypermasher from time to time
since it was also submitted here [1]. I like the improvements that you've
made, the interface is certainly nicer, and your codebase appears to be more
concise. Hypermasher could run without Flash (barring the music), but Hyperlax
refuses to start without it, however that's just a nitpick (though you might
be surprised at the number of people who have flash disabled by default these
days.)

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8309848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8309848)

~~~
tbird24
Thank you!

Regarding the flash issue, you're right, I'm noticing this too. Completely
didn't think about that. The "let's go" button waits for the sound to finish
loading, but if it never does, you can't start it :/.

I'll look into this, hopefully not too many people are affected.

~~~
mortenjorck
Wow, have you patched out Flash dependance already? I'm running on a Flash-
free Safari and it looks and sounds great.

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0x0
Pretty cool. Had a tough time getting it to work in Chrome with "right-click-
to-play-flash", but finally got it running by whitelisting your domain. Just
clicking the "run all plugins this time" didn't work.

Edit: The light-bulb icon didn't make much sense at first (fullscreen mode),
looks like it's for toggling the sidebar in non-fullscreen-mode only. Maybe
hide it in fullscreen?

~~~
tbird24
flash? There should be no flash on the site, it's an HTML5 video. Very
strange..., never heard of this issue before. If you can provide more details
that'd be great, but no worries if not.

Light bulb actually = "dark mode", it hides everything else on the page. I
intentionally left it ambiguous to see if people would curiously click on it
:)

Thanks for checking it out!

~~~
0x0
The webpage loads at least
"[http://connect.soundcloud.com/soundmanager2/soundmanager2_fl...](http://connect.soundcloud.com/soundmanager2/soundmanager2_flash9.swf")
in chrome osx, and it seems that with right-click-to-play-flash this prevents
the "let's go" button from appearing, even after clicking "run all plugins
this time".

~~~
tbird24
Hhmm, thanks a ton for that info. Not sure yet if there's anything I can do
about this, but I will definitely look into it.

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lostbit
Nice! I will set it on my room TV as an ambient attaction while talking with
friends. let's see how it goes.

This reminds me that project Hyperlapse.js on
[http://hyperlapse.tllabs.io/](http://hyperlapse.tllabs.io/). They used to
have a working site where you could make your own (quick) hyperlapse using
Street View's content.

~~~
tbird24
Sweet! It works great with Chromecast and Apple TV, so have at it :)

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DarkTree
wow, very impressive for just "learning" how to code. Great work man, I like
the design a lot.

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t-mw
Good job! I think it would suit being played on a big screen at events/cafés.
Will new videos be played as they're posted, or will it continue moving back
in history?

Edit: Answered my own question I think, it just returned to play a video from
a few minutes ago.

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janfoeh
Very nice! A minor niggle: the map in the sidebar doesn't react when the
window is being resized.

Edit: also, the map seems to get stuck:
[http://i.imgur.com/YOVzJwz.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YOVzJwz.jpg)

~~~
tbird24
Gah! You are correct about the map not resizing. Has to do with the library I
used, called Datamaps. I could listen for window resize events, but for the
MVP I figured it wasn't worth it. Thanks for pointing it out though, I'll get
to this.

What did you to do get that map stuck in your screenshot? Never seen that
before.

~~~
janfoeh
I don't think I did anything - I hardly interacted with the page at all,
except from skipping a Soundcloud track once and possibly resizing the page.

At one point, it switched from "world view" to "US continental view" to show a
hyperlapse from Miami, and then got stuck there in perpetuity.

Edit — or maybe I had a blackout and this is resize-related as well. It would
make sense if I shrank the window, so half of the map got stuck outside the
window. Never mind then :)

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shostack
Really cool. Two suggestions:

1\. Widescreen aspect ratios

2\. Volume slider, not just control. I'm listening on headphones at my desk at
the lowest volume on OSX and it is still too loud. If I try to go any lower
the sound turns off.

~~~
tristanho
For point 2, try pressing:

SHIFT + OPTION + VOLUMEDOWN

Definitely agree on the widescreen aspect ratios though, could make a really
cool experience even cooler.

~~~
shostack
That helped, but definitely would have expected it to just be in the UI and
not require an unfamiliar keyboard shortcut.

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Kiro
Why was the title changed? It's not about the Instagram videos only. That
would be a useless service. It's about the whole concept, which the old title
much better represented.

~~~
tbird24
Huh. Disappointed they changed it, would have thought I have the right to
describe my own site! Oh well.

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lsdafjklsd
This music is amazing! Is it from one playlist on soundcloud?

~~~
tbird24
The default is one playlist, yes. But if you head to the "music" tab, you can
choose from a bunch more!

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shostack
I might be missing it, but is there a link anywhere to the individual
playlists on Soundcloud? Would love little links on the music tab to go
straight to the playlist vs. just the individual song from clicking the link
at the bottom right.

The playlist is great but I don't always want the video running to listen to
it.

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tbird24
Ah, there isn't, but that's a good idea. Is there a playlist in particular you
wanted a link to, I can pull it up for you.

~~~
shostack
The chillout one is excellent. Not sure how much revenue opportunity there is,
but redesigning that sound player and curating the music with affiliate links
might cover some of the hosting bill.

Out of curiosity, can you speak to your hosting situation and costs as related
to getting hit with this news?

I'm a novice coder, but I'm trying to learn about the sysadmin side of things
too and wondering how one might take a site like this and avoid massive bills.

~~~
carlbarrdahl
I was also curious to find the chill out set so I looked in the source of
app.js to find the playlist id and fetch the response:

`curl
[http://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/9875415.json?client_id=0...](http://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/9875415.json?client_id=0e790e28fcdf924f78f80375ad74fcb8`)

[http://soundcloud.com/chillcall/sets/chill](http://soundcloud.com/chillcall/sets/chill)

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techaddict009
Awesome work. Can you share the tech stack you used?

~~~
tbird24
Haha, I can but it will leave you unimpressed. This was my very first coding
project. It's a front-end app, so good ol' fashioned HTML/CSS/Javascript.
Libraries used were:

\- jquery

\- Datamaps (for the map)

-ElementQueries.js (to do responsive design for a given element, pretty cool, check it out)

\- Bowser.js (to detect browser)

\- moment.js (for the "time since")

And I think that's it. LMK if you have any other questions.

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paromi
a volme control would be nice

~~~
braaap
Interesting. You still use this feature? I always thought YouTube and the like
still included it on their sites as a throwback to an earlier time, or
something. I always use the software on the playback device itself to control
the speakers.

~~~
marquis
Volume controls are important! Some examples: you are on a VoIP call but want
background music. You have to listen out for some notification and the front
music can't be too loud. You work with other audio files e.g video editing but
don't need to be listening actively. Any media-multi-tasking situation,
really.

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grizzles
I'm trying to figure out why I like this so much... Nice job.

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siegecraft
This is really amazing, thank you for sharing.

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ashwinaj
Mind blown! Awesome work.

