Will iOS work on the receiving end?

[hepcat72]

I am considering your cool portal solution as an upgrade to my current paired shared Wyze-cam/iPad setup with my parents (where we each have a Wyze cam and iPad set up, but with which comes annoying issues).

After finding your project and trying to figure out how to accomplish it with my parents, I googled the ability to auto-answer FaceTime calls on an iPad and I discovered that it may be possible:

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-use-iphone-auto-answer

Is there any reason this would not work if I set up my parents end using their iPad and set up the call initiating end using an old laptop with Mojave?

[hepcat72]

Incidentally, I set up 2 iPads to do the same thing as teleportme, except for the scheduled calls (which I have not investigated - and may(?) be possible...).

There are a few things that must be done:

• Create 2 iCould accounts for exclusive use by the portal, like you guys already do (if you re-use an old iCloud account, be sure that that email address is not in your contact card because otherwise, all your calls will be auto-answered by the portal iOS device)
• Sign off of any current iCloud account on each iOS device and sign into the new iCloud account you created for the portal
• Turn on Auto-answer in settings (just search settings for "Auto-answer") and set the delay time how you wish (I set mine to 0 seconds)
• Create a contact on each iOS device that has the portal iCloud account of the other iOS device
• If you want to be able to start the portal via a single tap from either device using an icon on the home screen
  • Create a Siri Shortcut with a single action: make a facetime call to the other iOS device's iCloud portal account you created
  • Share the shortcut and select "add to home screen" (choose a name, icon color, and icon glyph)
  • OPTIONAL (to create the shortcut once and send to the other iOS device instead of create it twice)
    • Turn on iCloud Drive in the iCloud settings of each iOS device
    • Allow untrusted shortcuts in settings (if you want to have an icon on the home screen to start the portal) (search settings for "allow untrusted")
    • Create an import question to ask for the portal contact that was created
    • share the shortcut via email to the other iCloud account, tap the shortcut link, and select the portal contact you created earlier

To manually start the portal, just tap the icon you added to the home screen. Depending on the iOS version, you may end up in the Siri Shortcuts app, which requires a second step of tapping the green bar at the top of the screen to switch to the facetime app. (This was the case for my parents' iPad.)

Either party may start the portal, so I decided that scheduling calls wasn't too important.

You may want to restrict who can call either account so that random people can't just portal with you. You can do this using the do not disturb setting. Read about that here:

https://www.macworld.com/article/3214636/how-to-block-all-calls-except-those-from-your-contacts.html

It also appears that you may be able to create a Siri Shortcut automation that can schedule the calls.