CollabBoard
Connect & explore Creative Energy
The problem CollabBoard solves
CollabBoard is a real-time, collaborative digital whiteboard designed to solve the problem of chaotic and disorganized remote teamwork.
How It Makes Teamwork Easier:
Real-time Canvas: Everyone in a session sees drawing, shapes, and sticky notes appear on their screen.
Integrated Chat: A built-in chat panel allows for text-based discussions.
Full Session Control: The session host can lock the board.
Flexible Collaboration: With support for both private LAN (local network) and public Cloud sessions.
Save & Export: Never lose your work. Sessions can be saved.
Challenges we ran into
1)Solving the "Crossed Lines" Drawing Bug:
This was because the drawing tool (the GraphicsContext) maintained a continuous state, and it would draw a line from the last point of User A to the first point of User B.
We refined our network protocol by creating a new START_DRAW command. When a user clicks, this command tells everyone where a new line begins. DRAW commands then simply continue that specific line.
2)Transitioning from LAN to a Cloud-Based Architecture:
Our platform ensure a highly scalable feature of having connections over far away places over cloud network. The primary challenge was that our direct TCP Socket communication was unreliable over the internet due to firewalls and complex routing.
We replaced TCP Sockets with WebSockets. We deployed the Spring Boot application to a cloud platform (Render), transforming it into a central message broker for all users. The JavaFX client was modified to connect to the public cloud server. Session management was switched from IP-based to a code-based system, allowing users anywhere to join a session.
Technologies used