Live Poll Kit

A drop-in live polling system for presentations, webinars, and classrooms. Visitors scan a QR code on your slide, answer on their phone, results update live. No accounts, no signup, no per-respondent cost.

Built on Vercel + Neon Postgres. Three HTML pages, two API endpoints, one schema. Deploys in five minutes.

What it does

• Multiple choice polls with bar chart results
• Word clouds (open-ended text, sized by frequency)
• Question groups so you can chain several polls under one QR code
• Two flows: presenter-controlled (you advance manually) or auto-advance (audience self-paces)
• QR code generator that points to the right poll URL
• Admin panel to create, edit, activate, and reset questions
• Public results page for displaying live results full-screen

Pages

Path	Who it's for	What it does
/poll-admin	You	Create events, groups, questions. Generate QR codes. Activate questions in real time. Password-protected.
/poll?id=<question-id>	Audience	Vote on a single question.
/poll?group=<group-id>	Audience	Vote on a sequence of questions (the group).
/poll-results?id=<question-id>	Your screen	Show live results full-screen on the projector.
/api/poll-qr?id=<question-id>	Slides	SVG QR code pointing to the poll URL. Embed via <img src="...">.

Setup (5 minutes)

1. Get a database

Sign up free at neon.tech. Create a project. Copy the connection string.

In the Neon SQL editor, paste and run the contents of schema.sql.

2. Deploy to Vercel

git clone <this-repo>
cd live-poll-kit
npm install
vercel

When prompted, link to a new project. After the first deploy, set environment variables:

vercel env add DATABASE_URL          # paste the Neon connection string
vercel env add ADMIN_SECRET          # any strong password you'll remember
vercel deploy --prod

That's it. Your site is live.

3. Use it

1. Open https://yourdomain.com/poll-admin
2. Enter the admin password (the value of ADMIN_SECRET)
3. Create an event, a group, and your first question
4. Right-click the QR code → "Save image as..." and drop it on your slide
5. When the slide goes up, click "Activate" in the admin panel
6. Watch responses come in

Using QR codes in slides

For a slide-friendly QR code that always points to your active poll, embed:

<img src="https://yourdomain.com/api/poll-qr?group=<group-id>" alt="Scan to vote" />

The group param means the QR stays stable across all questions in that group. The audience scans once, then answers each question as you activate it.

For a single-question QR (different image per question), use ?id=<question-id> instead.

Presenter flow vs auto-advance

• Presenter mode (default): you click "Activate" on each question when you're ready. The audience sees a "Waiting..." screen until then.
• Auto-advance mode: set on a group. The audience walks through all questions at their own pace as soon as they scan. Useful for pre-meeting surveys or async use.

Change the mode on a group from the admin panel.

File map

api/
  _db.js           Neon connection helper
  poll.js          REST API for events, groups, questions, votes, results
  poll-qr.js       SVG QR code generator
public/
  poll.html        Public voting page (audience)
  poll-admin.html  Admin panel (you)
  poll-results.html Live results display (projector)
schema.sql         Database tables
vercel.json        Routes and CORS headers

Customizing

Visual styling. The HTML files use CSS variables at the top of each <style> block. Change --copper, --black, etc. to rebrand.

Domain in QR codes. The QR generator infers the host from the request headers. If you want to hardcode a different URL (e.g., a marketing domain), set PUBLIC_BASE_URL in your env.

Replacing the database. The API uses @neondatabase/serverless because it works well on Vercel Functions. To swap to a different Postgres provider, edit api/_db.js. The schema is plain Postgres, no extensions required beyond pgcrypto (already available on Neon for gen_random_uuid).

Limitations

• No per-user identity. Anyone with the URL can vote, and they can vote multiple times. Add a device_id cookie or auth layer if you need to prevent that.
• No real-time push. The voting/results pages poll the API on an interval. Fine for live audiences (you can see the numbers tick up). Not designed for thousands of concurrent voters.
• No rate limiting. Add Vercel's Edge Config or a simple in-memory limiter if you're worried about spam.

License & attribution

MIT. Copyright (c) 2026 Haim Dimer. Use it commercially, fork it, modify it. The only thing the license actually requires is keeping the copyright notice in the source.

A small "Live Poll Kit by Haim Dimer" credit is rendered in the bottom-right corner of each page by default. It's a 0.65rem gray line, deliberately understated. Removing it doesn't violate the license, but please keep it if you can. Sharing this kit is more fun when people get a tiny bit of credit back.

If you build something fun with this, I'd love to hear about it.