🔧 Fix: Replace Dead PubNub Twitter Stream with Live WebSocket Data

📋 Issue Reference

Fixes #8

🔍 Problem Analysis

The application stopped working because the PubNub Twitter stream (pubnub-twitter channel) is no longer functional. This is due to:

1. Twitter API Changes (Feb 2023): Twitter/X ended free API access in February 2023, moving to a paid tier-only model
2. PubNub Demo Stream: The PubNub Twitter stream was a demo service that relied on Twitter's free API, which is no longer available
3. Impact: Both index.html and messages.html were unable to receive real-time data, rendering the matrix visualization non-functional

✅ Solution Implemented

Replaced the deprecated PubNub Twitter stream with a free, actively maintained WebSocket stream from Quixio's real-time-data-sources:

WebSocket URL: wss://ai-chat-wss-demo-realtimedatasources-prod.deployments.quix.io/timeseries

Data Source: Real-time AI-generated customer support chat conversations (using Llama2 AI agents)

📝 Changes Made

1. index.html

• ✅ Removed PubNub SDK dependency
• ✅ Replaced PUBNUB.init() with native WebSocket API
• ✅ Updated message handling to parse WebSocket JSON format
• ✅ Added reconnection logic (auto-reload after 5 seconds on disconnect)
• ✅ Maintained original visual effect and character rendering

2. messages.html

• ✅ Removed PubNub SDK dependency
• ✅ Replaced PUBNUB.init() with native WebSocket API
• ✅ Updated message queue from twitterMessages to chatMessages
• ✅ Added reconnection logic (auto-reload after 5 seconds on disconnect)
• ✅ Maintained all original features (speed adjustment, mouse interaction, clickable columns)
• ✅ Preserved language filtering capability

🎯 Benefits

1. Working Data Stream: Application now receives real-time data again
2. No External Dependencies: Removed PubNub SDK, using native WebSocket API
3. Free & Reliable: Quixio provides a free public stream for demos
4. Better Resilience: Added automatic reconnection on disconnect
5. Same Visual Experience: Users see the same Matrix-style falling text effect

🧪 Testing

Created test utilities in experiments/ folder:

• test_websocket.html - Simple WebSocket connection test
• test_server.py - Local HTTP server for testing

To test locally:

cd /path/to/repo
python3 experiments/test_server.py
# Open http://localhost:8000/index.html or http://localhost:8000/messages.html

📊 Technical Details

WebSocket Message Format:

{
  "timestamps": [1234567890],
  "stringValues": {
    "chat": ["Customer message text here"],
    "conversation_id": ["conv_123"],
    "role": ["customer"]
  }
}

The implementation extracts chat text from stringValues and converts it to Unicode symbols using the existing getSymbols() function, maintaining compatibility with the original visualization logic.

🚀 Deployment

No special deployment steps required. The changes work with any static file hosting since WebSocket connections are made client-side.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Co-Authored-By: Claude [email protected]