Interactive streams differ from traditional broadcasts in some important ways; they are often used by individuals or small groups without dedicated production support, and they require an enhanced level of interactivity with the audience. The LST (Local Streaming Tool) project will highlight modern web development techniques, such as code version control, and continuous deployment. LST will demonstrate a number of different types of functionality, including the ability to pull data from various cloud sources and incorporate the data in the stream, as well as having LST control some aspects of the broadcast configuration.
The idea for LST came from conversations with Twitch streamer Old Depressed Gamer (https://www.twitch.tv/olddepressedgamer) on his stream and on Discord. He custom-built a local OBS overlay for his stream and graciously talked us through his design and shared his code. Please drop by his stream and follow him if you can!
We are designing LST as an Electron App that can inject information into the broadcast overlay used by the streaming application (we use OBS Studio). LST can also control OBS functions via commands sent to the OBS Web-Socket listener.
For individual streamers, LST will typically run on the streaming PC. In larger broadcast configurations, for example in an eSports facility, LST will run on a separate production station on the LAN in the broadcast booth.