External text sources from 'visitors'

Hello,
I am trying to create a project that includes some way for external users or ‘audience members’ to send text to TouchDesigner from their phone. I explored the idea of using a Twitter API to filter for posts using key words but since Twitter changed to X and then made the developer pricing exorbitant, this is a no-go.

It also seems to be a similar story with trying to use another service like Instagram’s API though this just seems to be an even harder task.

I’ve also had the idea of using a Google Form API to collect the responses from the form but google requiress a lot of privacy consent and documentation to data usage.

I’d like to ask if any of you can think of another way to do this? Perhaps a forum on a Wix hosted site I create and then use a webhook?

Or maybe I am thinking about it too hard and there is an in the box solution to this.

TL;DR:
I’m looking for a solution to allow audience members to send messages to TouchDesigner in the form of text from their phone or other devices.

Many thanks in advance!

You can use the webServerComponent and either a local tunneling service like ngrok or use portforwarding or or a local wifi.

Another solution would be to use other services that do have a realtimeAPI using websockets like directus or firebase.

All of this require you to build a custom website though, but that is not that hard nowdays

Hello,
I do that for a theatral project with director Jean Boillot:

(sorry for the french :slight_smile:
With text going from server to audience phone and vice-versa.
For that I use node-red, very easy to install on local server, with graphic interface, javascript coding and many possibilities. You can even install or rent a node-red server on internet.
https://nodered.org/
We are working on another project for more audience on their personal smartphone.
Jacques

Hi Jacques, thank you for your reply, this seems very promising! Though my coding skills are not the strongest. I’ll look into Node-red. Thanks again.