This post was originally posted on my personal blog.
TLDR
I made a web app that will monitor your smile via an artificial intelligence using the webcam. I show you funny videos, if you smile you lose! It’s very funny, it feels good, it’s open source and it only uses web technologies!
Use 5 minutes of your time to have a laugh.
If it’s done, you must have laughed at least to one or two videos. You must have !
Otherwise, either you’re too strong, or you have no soul.
You want to add a funny video? Did you see a bug? Is a feature missing? The project is open-source and I invite you to participate. I have the approval of merge request very easy!
If you want to know why and how I built this app, you’ll find exactly that in the rest of the article!
The idea
As I was telling you, the period is quite moldy. As a result, like anyone who’s a little depressed, I’m nonchalantly walking around on YouTube. I was looking for funny content to help me change my mind.
And that’s when I came across (once again) those famous You Laugh You Lose videos. The principle is simple : you put people in front of funny videos, if they laugh they lose.
Why not do the same thing but in the browser with an AI monitoring the smile of the user?
I have everything I need. The videos would come from YouTube so no need to host them, manage streaming or manage a player. It would be a static site to simplify the hosting of the app. And most importantly, I already know how to detect a smile on a face.
I gave myself 2 days to code everything, host the project, make the article you’re reading in two languages and put the code in open-source on my GitHub. OK GO.
Smile detection
So, believe it or not, that was by far the easiest and fastest part. For several reasons.
- First reason : nowadays, expression detection via artificial intelligence models is very easy. Anyone can do it and/or set it up.
- Second reason : I already did it in a previous project!
Remember ? I used the same stuff when i did my previous bullshit with gifs.
So, if you want to know how this part works in particular, I invite you to read the dedicated article.
In a few words, I use the face-api library which manages the whole complex part for me. With the webcam I load the models when I launch the app. I just need to use the high level face-api API after that. I check twice a second if the user is smiling or not.
/**
* Load models from faceapi
* @async
*/
async function loadModels() {
await faceapi.nets.tinyFaceDetector.loadFromUri("https://www.smile-lose.com/models")
await faceapi.nets.faceExpressionNet.loadFromUri("https://www.smile-lose.com/models")
}
/**
* Setup the webcam stream for the user.
* On success, the stream of the webcam is set to the source of the HTML5 tag.
* On error, the error is logged and the process continue.
*/
function setupWebcam() {
navigator.mediaDevices
.getUserMedia({ video: true, audio: false })
.then(stream => {
webcam.srcObject = stream
if (isFirstRound) startFirstRound()
})
.catch(() => {
document.getElementById("smileStatus").textContent = "camera not found"
isUsingCamera = false
if (isFirstRound) startFirstRound()
})
}
/**
* Determine if the user is smiling or not by getting the most likely current expression
* using the facepi detection object. Build a array to iterate on each possibility and
* pick the most likely.
* @param {Object} expressions object of expressions
* @return {Boolean}
*/
function isSmiling(expressions) {
// filtering false positive
const maxValue = Math.max(
...Object.values(expressions).filter(value => value <= 1)
)
const expressionsKeys = Object.keys(expressions)
const mostLikely = expressionsKeys.filter(
expression => expressions[expression] === maxValue
)
if (mostLikely[0] && mostLikely[0] == 'happy')
return true
return false
}
/**
* Set an refresh interval where the faceapi will scan the face of the subject
* and return an object of the most likely expressions.
* Use this detection data to pick an expression and spread background gifs on divs.
* @async
*/
async function refreshState() {
setInterval(async() => {
const detections = await faceapi
.detectAllFaces(webcam, new faceapi.TinyFaceDetectorOptions())
.withFaceExpressions()
if (detections && detections[0] && detections[0].expressions) {
isUsingCamera = true
if (isSmiling(detections[0].expressions)) {
currentSmileStatus = true
document.getElementById("smileStatus").textContent = "YOU SMILE !"
} else {
document.getElementById("smileStatus").textContent = "not smiling"
}
}
}, 400)
}
You’ll find all the source code of the project in the GitHub!
Video management
As said before, no way I manage the hosting or streaming of the videos. I want the cost of hosting and using this project to be around 0. The fact that it’s a static site will help a lot here. Thanks S3 + Cloudflare 🙂
So I figured I’d use the YouTube player, YouTube videos and the YouTube API. Thanks YouTube. The problem is that I want to stay on my own website. So I have to use the embed version of the YouTube player.
No worries, YouTube offers a dedicated API for the embed player!
I’ve never used the YouTube API before and I must say it was very easy to understand and use.
/**
* Setup the youtube player using the official API
*/
function setupYoutubePlayer() {
player = new YT.Player('player', {
height: '100%',
width: '100%',
videoId: 'ewjkzE6X3BM',
playerVars: {
'controls': 0,
'rel': 0,
'showinfo': 0,
'modestbranding': 1,
'iv_load_policy': 3,
'disablekb': 1
},
events: { 'onStateChange': onPlayerStateChange }
})
}
/**
* We want to show the intermissions when a video is over.
* Listening to the event onPlayerStateChange of the youtube api.
*/
function onPlayerStateChange(event) {
// 0 means the video is over
if (event.data === 0) {
player.stopVideo()
showIntermission()
}
}
/**
* Entrypoint. This should be use once.
*/
function startFirstRound() {
isFirstRound = false
currentSmileStatus = false
document.getElementById("loading").style.display = 'none'
document.getElementById('intermission').className = 'fadeOut'
player.playVideo()
}
/**
* Showing the next video to the user.
* This should be only trigger but the click on next video.
*/
function showNextVideo(event) {
event.preventDefault()
document.getElementById('loading').style.display = 'block'
document.getElementById('result').style.display = 'none'
if (listOfVideoIds.length) {
const nextVideoId = extractRandomAvailableVideoId()
player.loadVideoById({ videoId: nextVideoId })
player.playVideo()
setTimeout(() => {
currentSmileStatus = false
document.getElementById('intermission').className = 'fadeOut'
}, 1000)
} else {
showCredit()
}
}
Finally, I manage the videos in a simple array of string (YouTube video id) declared at the very beginning of the application. Each time the user clicks to see another video I randomly pick one up. The id is then removed from the array and inserted as the source of the embedded YouTube player. Easy!
TODO
I did it very quickly.
As a result, a lot of things are missing in this app.
Do you want to help?
A lot of stuff need to be add here :
- score management : 03/11/2020 - done by this PR
- management of other embedded players (dailymotion, vimeo, twitch)
- a skip button to cheat and go to the next video : 03/11/2020 - done by this PR
- a less strict management of smile detection (several smiles before counting a real smile)
- detect that the user is no longer in the field of view of the camera (very easy to do)
- hide the display of YouTube cards at the end of some videos
If you’re interested in something in this list and you’re not afraid of Javascript: you’ll find the GitHub here!
You Smile You Lose
Open your camera, we show you funny videos. If you smile, you lose !
Install
npm install
Configuration
SSL
In order for the models to be load and the camera to work in local, you'll need to install a self-signed certificate.
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 365
Full explanation here : https://hackernoon.com/set-up-ssl-in-nodejs-and-express-using-openssl-f2529eab5bb
When a passphrase is asked just type : default
Loading model URL
In local you need to adjust the configuration of your URL for the models to load normaly : see loadModels function in libs/app.js
Launch
DEV
npm run-script start-dev
PROD
npm start
Again, I have easy PR approval so don’t hesitate.
Epilogue
End of the challenge. I had a good laugh, it felt good. I hope it will be the same for you. It’s the most I can do to help you in this endless day. In the meantime, I’ll see you next Monday!
Top comments (5)
What an awesome idea, I didn’t know JavaScript could do this!
My feedback: I really like this because the source code is available.
Facenet api is to face detection what jQuery is to vanilla Javascript
Then we could integerate this into Google Meets, have a competetion and automatically move people smiling to the top of the screen
Best project of the year 🎉