
Show HN: Squawk – Walkie Talkie for Teams - zumachase
https://www.squawk.to
======
kawfey
This is cool. I can't wait to try it out!

Crazy Feature request: One of the things I've wanted for years out of a
software based walkie-talkie like this is manual audio spacial diversity
control (a.k.a. 3D audio). That way I can have multiple simultaneous channels,
but be able to change the position (left/right/forward/45deg/etc) and the
volume of each feed so I can have situational awareness with all channels
while being able to use my brain to separate and focus on a particular
channel.

These kinds of systems are often marketed to dispatch agencies, mission
control, government/military customers, etc, and are super expensive[0]. I've
never seen a consumer-grade version of 3D audio like this, but that would be
super beneficial to ad-hoc communicators in disasters, scanner enthusiasts,
public event coordinators, county/city-level EOCs that can't afford expensive
systems.

[0]:[https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24741/new-3d-audio-
wil...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24741/new-3d-audio-will-
allow-a-10-pilots-to-hear-alerts-come-from-the-direction-of-the-threat)

~~~
zumachase
Thanks! The tech in the link is awesome...might be above our pay grade.

~~~
plttn
It's definitely doable. Dolby Axon (which shut down a few years ago) had
positional voice chat.

------
sholladay
Hooray! I have been holding out hope for more push-to-talk apps on desktop
platforms. It's such a step up from always-on listening. As an audio engineer,
I grit my teeth every time there is microphone feedback, echo, or other audio
issues on group calls, and these generally don't occur on PTT apps because
everyone tends to be muted most of the time. And if it does start happening,
the user more easily realizes what they did wrong because they correlate it
with the button press. In fact, even if the user does not realize what they
did wrong, others on the call can identify the source because "it's only
happening when Jane speaks." I can't tell you how many times I've been on a
call with feedback where the person who is causing it is complaining about it
to the group without realizing it's their own fault and others on the call
don't necessarily know, either. This never happens on PTT calls. There's also
the obvious privacy benefits, as it avoids the issue where people speak
without realizing they are unmuted. PTT is better in nearly every respect. I'm
very excited about this.

I do have some questions that the website doesn't answer for me:

1\. What about screen sharing? Seeing the word "collaboration" implies to me
that I should be able to do so, but it's unclear. In the screenshot of the
app, I see an icon or two in the right-hand sidebar that might be relevant to
this, but they seem kind of generic.

2\. What about mobile devices? I routinely do Slack calls where one or two
people are on their phone for various reasons. It would be useful to know if
that is supported or will be at some point.

3\. I want to know more about the encryption. As you're probably aware, there
has been a lot of controversy over the security of Zoom. In particular, there
is an ongoing lawsuit related to their false claims of end-to-end encryption.
[1] I think any new product, especially a chat app, that claims to be end-to-
end encrypted really needs to show us the details of its protocol and stack,
and ideally open source as many parts of that as possible. Does it use the
Signal protocol? The site says "Squawk groups are invite-only and end-to-end
encrypted." But which parts are E2E encrypted? The group membership? The
message content? The message metadata? Everything?

Lastly, it would be great if you could add the app to Homebrew Cask, as it's
my preferred way to download and manage apps on macOS.

1: [https://gizmodo.com/zoom-accused-of-misrepresenting-
security...](https://gizmodo.com/zoom-accused-of-misrepresenting-security-
measures-in-ne-1842756394)

~~~
zumachase
Glad to see we're not the only PTT fans out there.

1\. Screen sharing is next on our list, it's the thing that we want most
ourselves.

2\. This is definitely not mobile optimized. It does work-ish on mobile
phones, but it maintains long-lived webrtc connections so it's not ideal (we
ensure these are not transmitting when muted, but we have a keep alive
protocol which ensures they don't die, and would be harsh on mobile
batteries).

3\. Squawk uses webrtc, which is e2e encrypted by default. Additionally, we
don't use any SFUs so we never have the audio unencrypted. All link
negotiation and audio transmission are done entirely p2p and thus completely
e2e encrypted.

~~~
vorpalhex
Is there a plan for (at least self hosted) SFUs for firewall transversal? I
imagine in some corporate environments that'll be necessary.

~~~
zumachase
We have TURN servers setup for NAT traversal...but they don't terminate ssl
like an SFU does.

~~~
vorpalhex
That's great to hear. Having battled webrtc in the past it sounds like your
team is doing a great job!

~~~
zumachase
I don't think anyone ever truly wins the war against webrtc

~~~
chrisked
I feel in the thread from feross lie some synergies.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23408831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23408831)

~~~
zumachase
We actually use simple-peer. feross is great, suggest having a look at his
repos.

------
mosselman
So I'd have this running and then anyone from work can just start talking to
me and I'd hear it straight away?

That sounds like a nightmare to be honest. How will you ever reach any level
of concentration this way? Even the thought that someone could just start
talking to you would probably ruin your chances at getting in any sort of
flow.

Also, it feels like only a small step away from a form of work surveillance.
"Where were you? I was talking to you on Squawk".

Unless my assumptions of what this is are completely wrong. There isn't much
to go on on the page.

~~~
cryptozeus
Think of it this way, if you are sitting in the office then anyone can come
talk to you in your cube. I think it can be great app if you keep it running
during fix hours like 3 hrs in the afternoon when anyone can come and ping.
Rest of the time you dont have to keep it on.

~~~
masukomi
think of it this way, most knowledge workers are finally free from being
constantly interrupted by people who just feel like stopping by to chat, or
don't really know or care that you're focusing on something. Now, there's a
tool to bring that back!

<sarcasm>It's only like 15 minutes to get back on task after every single
interruption. That won't hamper productivity at all. Much more important for
me to get instant answers and boredom reduction whenever i feel like it.
</sarcasm>

~~~
zumachase
I get that. I have plenty of time where I zone out of Squawk. But there are
definitely projects/periods where I need to constantly be checking in with a
dozen people and various subsets of that dozen.

If that's not a problem you face, then Squawk is definitely the wrong tool for
you.

~~~
mosselman
> If that's not a problem you face, then Squawk is definitely the wrong tool
> for you.

Either that, or you are solving 'that problem' the wrong way.

------
zumachase
Hi all - open beta of a tool we created for ourselves during lockdown. We got
sick of trying to replicate the effortless comms we had in the office, and
hated managing a half dozen always-on Zoom/Slack/etc calls. So we built
Squawk.

~~~
nerdponx
Are you planning to open-source this? Will it become a paid product? Is it P2P
or are you hosting it?

~~~
zumachase
We're not planning to open source it. Some features down the road will become
paid but the free version will always contain at the very least what you see
today.

The heavy lifting is done P2P falling back to our TURN servers if NAT
traversal is necessary.

~~~
n3k5
That's good to know; you should put that information on the web site.
Especially the part about the business model.

Another thing I'd like to know before considering downloading the app is
system requirements. A lot of people aren't on the latest version of
Windows/MacOS yet.

------
deepspace
When I saw the capitalized Teams in the heading, I was excited for a minute,
because this would be a great add-on for Microsoft Teams. Alas it appears to
be 'yet another thing to install and run in the background'.

Any plans to provide the functionality as an add-on for other communications
apps?

~~~
zumachase
Hey - we're looking at integrations with other apps, but the walled gardens
make that difficult unfortunately.

I hear the frustration of downloading another thing - I've changed the landing
page to make clear you can access in your browser at
[https://app.squawk.to](https://app.squawk.to)

------
miki123211
See also Zello.

It doesn't have the e2e stuff afaik, but works on all major platforms,
including mobile. They also have a native desktop app (not Electron). As far
as I know, it's used a lot, mostly by drivers for Uber or similar services. I
haven't used it for a couple of years now, but it's worth giving it a go.

------
hdjriro
Sugestion: volume normalization, compression (as in audio effect, not as in
zip). A lot of people have shitty mics or change their distance.

------
jv22222
FYI Squawk team, there seems to be an issue with your main email. I tried to
contact you can got this back:

> Hello,

> We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (hello)
> may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group.
> A few more details on why you weren't able to post:

> * You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly.

> * The owner of the group may have removed this group.

> * You may need to join the group before receiving permission to post.

> * This group may not be open to posting.

Looks like google apps group configuration issue.

Related support article:

[https://support.google.com/a/zumaltd.com/bin/topic.py?topic=...](https://support.google.com/a/zumaltd.com/bin/topic.py?topic=25838)

~~~
zumachase
Thanks for that. G Suite groups are a pain, I'll look into it. Feel free to
email me directly at chase@zumaltd.com

------
dcsan
I wonder if a "dispatcher" model might be interesting for this, like an old
style minicab/police service. Then people could use squawk-scanners for the
channels they want to listen into.

It could get annoying if its on all day, SOMA FM provides an interesting
police scanner with audio mix which is an oddly relaxing soundtrack
[https://somafm.com/scanner/](https://somafm.com/scanner/)

Are you going to add some jargon, the stuff that made CB radio kooky back in
the day?

~~~
mattbk1
See also [http://websdr.org](http://websdr.org) for ham radio listening.

------
numlocked
Cool! Might give this a spin for our live-ops response team.

You should fix your meta description tag on the landing page :) I just pasted
it into slack and got a...less than useful preview.

~~~
zumachase
On it! Thanks

------
schafele
I really like the idea. Push to talk is a proven concept when a lot of people
work together and should stay informed (e.g. fire fighters). I see a huge
potential for it...

------
vhodges
Pricing?

Also: similar (from yesterday I think)
[https://www.walkie.chat/](https://www.walkie.chat/)

~~~
zumachase
Free

~~~
vhodges
Thanks!

------
kitd
This looks really good.

Is it possible to mark yourself as away? I could see it might encourage the
expectation to always be present on the receiving end.

~~~
zumachase
If you mute yourself, everyone else can see you muted. But statuses are on one
of our upcoming sprints.

~~~
OJFord
> mute yourself

The homepage describes it has push-to-talk; is muting yourself distinct from
not pushing?

~~~
zumachase
Yes, muting is on the receiving side: when you mute a group (or global mute)
you won't hear anyone, and they can all see that you've muted and aren't
there.

The push-to-talk is on the sending side. So when you're not pushing, your mic
is muted. And when you click the mute button, your speakers are muted.

~~~
OJFord
Oh I see, muting a group rather than yourself.

------
indentit
Reminds me of Pragli [1] but without the animated avatars.

How sustainable is this project? I see it's not open sourced, but there is no
pricing page either?

Also, how are the connections made, P2P or through a central intermediate
server?

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22134329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22134329)

~~~
zumachase
Good question: there's no pricing page at the moment because we'll always
offer the current functionality for free. We have some enterprise features
(freemium) that we're planning, but we also won't charge for those until
lockdowns are lifted.

Squawk is webrtc based (audio and data) so it's mostly p2p (except for
tracking the swarm).

------
gflarity
Feedback: Where's the video demo? I don't want to install it to see it in
action and decide if I want to install it.

~~~
zumachase
Much appreciated. That's highest priority for me. Misstep on our part.

------
jeremy_k
Just a heads up, but your header description appears to be from the template
you used.

"Aptonic app landing page template helps you easily create websites for mobile
apps, product landing, promotion and many more."

I linked to your landing page in Slack and that is what showed up

------
pensatoio
What happens when you have incoming audio from two different groups?

Can you select a particular group to use PTT?

~~~
zumachase
This is a tricky problem, and we have a couple of ideas. But currently if
we're having a longer chat (double clicked will latch-open the mic) then we
mute the other groups. Anyone else in the other groups will be able to see
that you're muted.

We're contemplate auto-muting other groups when you have incoming audio. Would
love to hear your thoughts as well.

~~~
dharmab
When I played milsim games like Arma, a useful feature was to have my "squad
channel" in my left ear, "command channel" in my right ear, and separate keys
to PTT for each channel.

~~~
gil
Did you find anything with those features already? I have a very similar
scenario and I'm currently exploring what is available.

------
gflarity
Is there a video of it in action?

~~~
zumachase
There's not at the moment. I will sort one out in the coming days (too late
for our HN moment unfortunately). Apparently we're not the best marketers.

But it's just like a walkie talkie: press the group you want to talk to, and
everyone hears you.

------
simon_000666
Awesome! Great idea - if you are looking for feature requests, it would be
great if you could also create only bi-directional channels on demand.
Basically like a Star Trek communicator...

~~~
zumachase
Thanks! Definitely looking for feature requests. I'm not sure what you mean.
Do you mean quick/throwaway groups?

~~~
simon_000666
I just meant more - 1<>1 channels. So I could say : sqwark Dave and it
instantly creates me a 1<>1 channel with Dave of he’s available.

Also just noticed the second download link lower down the page doesn’t work.

~~~
zumachase
Ah yeah that's on our todo list. At the moment, we tend to create groups like
"Person A / Person B" but it's not ideal. The plan is that you can also Squawk
anyone inside a group 1-on-1. Screen-sharing is next on the list.

Download link fixed...thanks!

~~~
simon_000666
Cool, yep that also works. Another awesome thing would be the option to run a
speech to text algo on the conversation and have it transcribed into the
channel log so if I miss the conversation I can catch up on things. But also
you would need an ‘off-the-record’ Mode if you wanted to complain in private.

------
chpwssn
Great idea! Switching the model from idling in one channel to being in
multiple groups at the same time is a good idea.

Do you have plans on releasing a binary for Linux?

~~~
zumachase
Thanks!

Yeah we definitely will release linux (it's electron based so no reason to
leave linux out). It works better as an app but you can also access it in
browser at [https://app.squawk.to](https://app.squawk.to)

~~~
melicerte
+1 for linux support. This is a great idea we would like to test as a
confined/work for heom team, but most of my collegues (including myself) is
using Linux.

------
uoaei
How is this any different from a local Mumble server?

------
pritambaral
How does it compare against Mumble or TeamSpeak?

~~~
eeZah7Ux
Mumble is entirely Free Software and self-hostable.

------
grinich
Hey @zumachase - was hoping to get in touch but the contact email on your
homepage is bouncing. (hello@zumaltd.com)

------
gavin_gee
interesting app for the "corridor conversations" that have been lost with
everyone Working from Home. It definitely needs integration with other
communications apps, as its important to know when to switch context from
another medium to PTT. Seems like it becomes a feature for Slack, For Teams.

~~~
zumachase
Typically, it's switching from PTT into another context: we often start short
conversations, and then realize there's more work to be done and we slack the
results of that to each other.

------
nullc
Why not mumble?

------
chaz6
I look forward to an AppImage for Linux.

~~~
awill
Isn't Flatpak preferable?

~~~
chaz6
I prefer AppImage because it has no requirements on the host other than basic
libraries like libc.

------
upofadown
>... end-to-end encrypted...

How do you verify that you are connected to the person you think you are
connected to?

~~~
zumachase
There's a handshake before you accept a connection to anyone. Each peer
generates a keypair and sends the public key to our servers (which they're
authed with). On connection, peers receive the public key from the Squawk
servers, and perform a handshake to verify their identity. This all happens
p2p.

~~~
ta17711771
What happens on failure?

~~~
zumachase
A failure would indicate some sort of malicious actor, so the connection is
logged and rejected.

------
nonbirithm
How does this compare against Zello?

------
Uhrheber
Website needs javascript to even display something -> ignored.

------
getcrunk
How does this compare to something like teamspeak?

~~~
zumachase
This is like being in many teamspeak channels at once. It's also built on open
standards like webrtc so you could easily integrate into a squawk swarm.

------
pachico
I love it! Any plans to integrate it with Slack?

~~~
zumachase
Definitely in our plans

~~~
pachico
Great, I'll stay tuned!

------
tycu
Finally, something better than Zoom.

~~~
zumachase
We built this specifically because of Zoom fatigue.

------
hvd9900
looks good!

