Tlapbot

Tlapbot is an Owncast bot, aiming to add the feature of channel points and channel point redeems to Owncast.

This bot is currently in-development. The goal is to have a feature set on par with Twitch channel points, while making use of Owncast webhooks and especially External actions.

Features

Currently, the bot gives points to everyone in chat -- the interval can be configured in the config, as well as the amount of points given.

The users in chat can then use their points on redeems. The bot currently only has one hardcoded redeem, but I'd like to make this configurable, so that every Owncast streamer can set up their own redeems that best fit their stream.

The redeems then show on a "Redeems dashboard" that everyone can view at the flask server's URL, which can be included in Owncast as an External action, a single button that displays information about recent redeems.

Setup

The Python prerequisites for running tlapbot are the libraries flask, requests and apscheduler.

Dev setup (from git repository)

1. Clone the repository.

2. Run pip install -e . in the root folder. This will install tlapbot as a package in editable more, along with all its prerequisites.

3. Initialize db:

   python -m flask init-db
   

4. Create an instance/config.py file and fill it in as needed. Default values are included in tlapbot/default_config, and values in config.py overwrite them. (The database also lives in the instance folder by default.)

   Tlapbot might not work if you don't overwrite these:

   SECRET_KEY # get one from running `python -c 'import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex())'`
   OWNCAST_ACCESS_TOKEN # get one from owncast instance
   OWNCAST_INSTANCE_URL # default points to localhost owncast on default port
   

Owncast setup

In Owncast, navigate to the admin interface at /admin, and then go to Integrations.

Access Token

In Access Tokens, generate an Access Token to put in instance/config.py. The bot needs both the "send chat messages" and "perform administrative actions" permissions, since getting the list of all connected chat users is an administrator-only action.

Webhook

In webhooks, create a Webhook, and point it at your bot's URL with /owncastWebhook added.

In debug, this will be something like localhost:5000/owncastWebhook, or, if you're not running the debug Owncast instance and bot on the same machine, you can use a tool like ngrok to redirect the Owncast traffic to your localhost.

External Action

In External Actions, point the external action to your bot's URL with /dashboard added.

In debug, pointing the External Action to an address like localhost:5000/dashboard might not work because your localhost address doesn't provide https, which owncast requires.

If you use ngrok to redirect Owncast traffic to localhost, it will work because the ngrok connection is https.

Example:

URL: MyTlapbotServer.com/dashboard
Action Title: Redeems Dashboard

Running the bot

Running in debug:

Set the FLASK_APP variable:

export FLASK_APP=tlapbot

or in Powershell on Windows:

$Env:FLASK_APP = "tlapbot"

Run the app (in debug mode):

python -m flask --debug run 

Running in prod:

To be added when I actually run a prod version of the bot.

Config

Values you can include in instance/config.py to change how the bot behaves.

Channel points interval and amount

POINTS_CYCLE_TIME decides how often channel points are given to users in chat, in seconds.

POINTS_AMOUNT_GIVEN decides how many channel points users receive.

By default, everyone receives 10 points every 600 seconds (10 minutes).