
Show HN: We made a web app so that our parents can keep reading to our daughter - benja123
http://readastorytome.com/
======
anticsapp
This is a really good idea. This has nothing to do with the current crisis but
if you could somehow credibly guarantee hosting for 50+ years people could
read stories to their yet to be born grandchildren. People with terminal
diseases and a two year old could still read to their children after their
passing. Consider it.

~~~
koolba
At $.02/GB you could host a 1 GB video on S3 for about $12.

Based on past performance that price would probably be even cheaper as the
per-GB-month price keeps dropping.

The video would be likely be much smaller than 1 GB so you could instead spend
the same money to put it on all three major clouds, AWS, Azure, and Google,
storage tiers for the same price.

I’m willing to bet $100 that at least one of them will still be operating a
cloud blob store in 50 years.

~~~
benja123
When you think about it, these files won't need to be accessed very often or
quickly, so you could reduce the costs to $2.5 per GB by using AWS Glacier. I
mean what is an extra 3-5 hour wait when you have already been waiting 50
years...

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scott113341
Awesome idea, and nice work! Is this open source, and if so, would you mind
sharing a link to it? I am beginning work on a slightly similar project [1] to
help facilitate speech therapy (girlfriend is a speech-language pathologist)
over video chat and would be interested to compare with your approach and tech
stack.

I saw this [2] Chess + video chat project the other day, and drew heavy
inspiration from its approach [3].

[1]: [https://github.com/scott113341/slp-
memory](https://github.com/scott113341/slp-memory)

[2]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22790728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22790728)

[3]:
[https://glitch.com/edit/#!/rootshirechess](https://glitch.com/edit/#!/rootshirechess)

~~~
benja123
I have not made it open source atm, but it is something I am considering.

Tech stack: Elixir/Phoenix (liveview mostly) WebRTC code is based off:
[https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/webrtc-
web/#...](https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/webrtc-web/#0)

I setup a turnserver using
[https://github.com/coturn/coturn](https://github.com/coturn/coturn)

What do you need help with? Maybe I can help you now.

~~~
palerdot
I'm interested more about how you are doing deployments of elixir/phoenix app,
and your dev setup ... like do you use docker for developing and production
and stuffs like that ...

~~~
benja123
edeliver + distillery

Followed this tutorial [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-
to-auto...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-automate-
elixir-phoenix-deployment-with-distillery-and-edeliver-on-ubuntu-16-04)

~~~
palerdot
Thanks for the info. Can you give more info on your dev setup? Do you use
docker for developement/production?

~~~
benja123
I don't use docker - I have never really used it and wasn't going to start.
It's using one DO server, a 4 vCPU, but could be using much much less. Before
posting I upgraded it from a 5$ machine The turnserver is a $5 DO server.

Feel free to email me - ben@readastorytome.com and I will gladly fill you in
on all the nitty details around the deployment. It's embarrassingly simple :)

~~~
palerdot
Thanks for the info and for offering help. I will definitely reach out to you
in case I need more info on your setup.

Wishing you best for your app.

------
license2e
This is an awesome idea, I had one yesterday that was similar but for a
different purpose: LastMessage.to/<someone>

After reading this article: [https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/us/costa-luminosa-
passengers-...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/us/costa-luminosa-passengers-
ordeal/index.html) "Kevin and Ryan Sheehan will never know whether their
father heard them say goodbye on speaker phone."

My thought was to create a place where you can leave your last message to
someone or to the world.

~~~
benja123
That story really gets to me.

With Covid-19 it's not just getting sick, it's getting sick and then being
isolated from your family and loved ones knowing you may never see them again.
Then you have the health care workers who are providing life saving care while
isolating themselves from their loved ones so as not to risk getting them
sick. The closest thing I have experienced to that type of fear is military
service, but at least in that case my family and I had time to prepare for it
mentally. Luckily I got through that experience okay.

I couldn't imagine being in the situation that these people are in today.

Anyways - I find it kind of hard to put into words how Covid makes me feel

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mataug
This is so cool, My mom is a school teacher, and the school is trying to get
her to make videos for her students.

She struggles with video editing software to make videos. This could help a
lot, especially if I could have custom stories.

She could do a story session with my and I would just record the screen.

~~~
benja123
You can! Right now you can upload a PDF and that becomes your story.

~~~
mataug
Thank you !!

I was thinking about building something like this over the weekend. You saved
me a lot of effort.

I'm willing to self-host / donate some money if that helps with server costs.

~~~
benja123
Anytime. You should still build one! It was a lot of fun to build.

Thanks for the offer, but right now I don't see a need for any donations/self
hosting. Maybe that will come, but at the moment a relatively small single DO
box is handling it pretty well.

------
_benj
Thanks for sharing! It such a great idea :-) Talking with my wife (SLP) she
observed how important is interactive reading and I was wondering if you had
that planned or if open sourcing this was an option so I could contribute to
something like that.

Just as a reference, some therapy platforms allow the users to draw on the
book, or put stickers and such... and even though this is not full-blown
therapeutic, being able to draw (a transparent HTLM canvas on top of the
image? websockets communicating x,y?) would add a lot to this, I think.

Thanks for sharing!

~~~
benja123
I thought about adding a transparent layer so that my daughter and parents can
draw on a story. I never thought about it from a therapy point of view, but
that is just not an area I am familiar with - interesting though. I would be
super happy if this can be used for that.

As far as open sourcing it goes - I have not made it open source ATM, but it
is definitely something I am considering.

~~~
anticsapp
Is there any way you could apply here:
[https://apply.ycombinator.com/session/new?continue=https%3A%...](https://apply.ycombinator.com/session/new?continue=https%3A%2F%2Fapply.ycombinator.com%2F)
and rush your build in April/May? You have ten days left to apply but it looks
fine in the current state. You really have something here. I have no
affiliation with YC/HN.

------
zoom6628
This is wonderful. Truly one of those 'make a difference' kind of projects!
Kudos.

~~~
benja123
Thank you!

------
brianforde
This feels a lot like Caribu app [https://caribu.com/](https://caribu.com/)

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nicois
Add in the WHO book for children to help with dealing with covid too:

[https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/09-04-2020-children-
s-s...](https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/09-04-2020-children-s-story-book-
released-to-help-children-and-young-people-cope-with-covid-19)

~~~
benja123
Done!

------
tagolli
This looks really cool! I only see 7 books in the bookshelf. Are you planning
to add more?

~~~
benja123
Thanks. Yes - I will be adding more over time.

~~~
seige
Are these 7 books on public domain? Dont you have to run through buying rights
or something to use books written by others?

~~~
benja123
They are all CC licensed books. See the footer and bookshelf where I include
the license and link back to the sources

------
artur_makly
I just wanted to personally thank you for making this. My 7yr old and his
grandparents in NYC are LOVING this. Please keep uploading more great books to
the library!

~~~
benja123
Thank you so much for this comment. Really made my day.

------
hoomank3
Nice app. It could also be used to help the medical students who's exams have
all been cancelled. I would like to help if this is open-sourced.

One feature request: my Microsoft surface has a front and back camera. For
some reason, the app started with the read camera on. Would be nice if there
was a way to pick which camera you want, if there are multiple cameras on the
device.

~~~
_benj
I think that what camera is used doesn't depend on the app but on the browser.
In mine (Firefox) it asks me if I want to give permission to the app to use
the my camera AND it asks me which camera I want to give permission to. Chrome
also has something like that (I think it's in the URL bar, an icon that looks
like a video camera?)

Anyways, hope this helps!

~~~
benja123
You are correct - that is one way, but with webrtc there is also a way to give
users an option to pick which audio/video source

------
ldenoue
Very nice. Testing on my iPhone 6s landscape, I noticed the prev and next
buttons were not aligned with the book page.

I also created a similar tool a few weeks ago available for free as well here
[https://www.appblit.com/bookcafe](https://www.appblit.com/bookcafe)

~~~
benja123
That is really cool! Honestly we didn't focus on the "look" beyond making sure
it was functional.

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sshah1983
Caribu is an app in this space as well. Essentially video calls with sync’ed
storybooks.

------
war1025
I just tried this and couldn't get anything to load (Firefox). Maybe I'm just
doing something wrong? Didn't see any errors in the console

~~~
benja123
Mobile or desktop?

~~~
war1025
Desktop. I went into an "Anonymous Room" and it showed the interface, but
there was no book. I tried selecting a book from the "Bookshelf" and nothing
happened

~~~
benja123
Interesting - I tried it and it worked in firefox. Are you blocking Websockets
by any chance? Perhaps it's your firewall. I am using phoenix liveview which
uses websockets for everything.

~~~
war1025
So I tried again and it seems to be working this time. But the page of the
book is ~240x190px and I can't read a darn thing.

~~~
benja123
Can you send me a screenshot? Send it to ben@readastorytome.com

~~~
war1025
Third time is apparently the charm and now it's working just perfect. If it
messes up again I'll send something.

------
cs44
How has your experience with LiveView been?

~~~
benja123
Pretty great. It let me write this really quickly with minimal effort. There
were some quirks and some weird hacks I had to make when it came to working
with JS, but that could also be me doing it wrong.

My biggest complaint would be around some latency issues when the connection
is bad, but I knew that would be an issue when I chose it. I would definitely
choose it again.

------
anymane
Such a cool idea!

~~~
benja123
Thanks. It's been pretty useful for us and let us keep some type of normalcy
during these strange times.

