illumi

A social desktop application made with students in mind. Illumi was designed to help simplify online-learning and the delivery of course content through a digital means. Students are grouped into servers corresponding to their enrolled courses, within which they are able to interact in real-time with their colleagues. Within each server, a catalog of course information, events, lessons, tutorials can be found along with optional real-time messaging rooms and a shared-user whiteboard.

Table of Contents

• Requirements
• Features
  • Functionality
  • Native Application
• Demo
• Installation
  • Running in Development
  • Documentation
• Built With
• Using the Project

Minimum Requirements:

• Windows 7 or higher.
• macOS 10.13 or later.

Features

Functionality

• User authentication and session handling.
• Organize courses into a single shared hub, servers . Supports roles to manage member permissions and responsibilities.
• Manage members through an invitation system.
• Servers also features a page to share events to promote planning.
• Tutorials and lessons can be shared through Pages where users can upload the content they desire. An option to add a Room within a page allows for community discussion.
• Each server also boasts a shared-realtime-whiteboard for collaboration and problem-solving.
• All user uploaded content, including messages and whiteboard-drawing, are rendered and saved in real-time.
• Image uploading with Cloudinary.

Native Application

• A beatifully crafted UI and custom made titlebars for Windows and Mac.
• Taskbar support for Windows.
• Native desktop notifications anytime a user sends a message in one of your servers.

Demo

• View full demo video.

Installation

• Download the latest version here or visit our official site.
• Run the downloaded setup file and then launch the app from the created shortcut.
• You're done! 🎉

Running in Development

You will first need to clone the repository to your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/Yyassin/illumi.git

• Install Node js version 12.x or later.

• Navigate to the appropriate directory from terminal:

cd ~/illumi

• Create a config folder under client/src with file keys.js within it. Here place your cloudinary bucket name for image uploads:

module.exports = {
    cloudURL: '<YOUR.CLOUDINARY.NAME>'
}

• Create another config folder under server with file keys.js within it. Here place your mongo URI for connection to the database and also an API key, to secure REST access:

module.exports = {
    api: {
        key: 'secret_string'
    },

    database: {
        uri: `mongodb+srv://<username>:<password>@<your-cluster-url>/test?retryWrites=true&w=majority`,
    },
}

• Install the required dependencies in both the server and client directories:

cd ~/illumi/client && npm i
cd ~/illumi/server && npm i

• Run the main client file, along with the backend server in seperate terminals:

cd ~/illumi/client && npm run dev
cd ~/illumi/server && npm run dev

Documentation

Visit localhost:5000/api while the app is running for further app and API documentation. Alternatively, head over to the deployed site here.

• Enjoy! 🎉

Note : The backend server is routinely turned off from 10 PM to 8 AM. The app will not function during these hours.

Issues & feature requests

If you still experience any issues, we encourage you to report them here. Please follow the existing template, otherwise the issue will be closed without notice.

Any ideas to grow the app? You can also request features by adding a request label and we'll take a look! Developers are welcome to submit a pull request.

Here are our currently open issues.

Built With

• ReactJS | redux
• NodeJS | express | socket.io
• ElectronJS
• GraphQL
• MongoDB
• Azure (Deployment)

Using Project

• A demo user has already been created with the credentials below incase you don't want to create one yourself.

email: [email protected]
password: 123456

• Otherwise, create a user at the registration page. You will be greeted by a welcome page where you can create your first server, or accept any server-invitations.

• Create more servers through the plus-icon on the left-most sidebar. Pages can be editted by the controls at the top-header.

• Servers, server members and messages can be edited by right-clicking to bring up a context menu.

• Your user can be editted by clicking on the settings icon featured in the profile section, at the bottom of the inner-sidebar.

• These are the basic features that'll help you get started, there's much more to experience in the application!