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Apple Home intercom

Talk to any room from the Home app, your Apple Watch or Control Center — even on a HomePod-free, all-Sonos house. RoomCall adds each room to Apple Home as a camera with a talk button; what you say plays in that room with the chime first, exactly like a call from the card.

Turn it on

  1. Settings → Devices & services → RoomCall → Configure → Apple Home → turn on Add rooms to Apple Home.
  2. A notification shows a pairing code. In the Home app: + → Add Accessory → More options… → RoomCall, and enter the code.
  3. Assign each room camera to the matching room in Apple Home.

Talk to a room

Open the room's camera tile and tap the microphone, then talk. The room starts hearing you (chime first) as soon as you start speaking, and the call ends when you pause or turn the microphone off, so you can keep it on for a back-and-forth.

  • Apple Watch: open the Home app → the camera → tap the microphone.
  • Control Center: add the Home controls and pin the room camera.
  • Calls show up in history and notifications as coming from Apple Home.

How it works

sequenceDiagram
    participant I as iPhone (Home app)
    participant R as RoomCall (HomeKit camera)
    participant S as Speaker
    I->>R: open camera (HomeKit Accessory Protocol)
    R-->>I: picture of the room (H.264 over SRTP)
    I->>R: talk button audio (Opus over SRTP)
    R->>R: ffmpeg decodes → voice activity detection splits phrases
    R->>S: each phrase plays as a call (chime, announce, restore)

The camera "video" is a picture of the room name — RoomCall has no camera, it only uses the camera tile for its talk button. Nothing leaves your network.

Troubleshooting

  • RoomCall doesn't appear when adding an accessory. HomeKit uses mDNS (Bonjour). The iPhone and Home Assistant must be on the same network, or mDNS must be reflected between VLANs.
  • Port in use. Change HomeKit port (default 21099) if another bridge uses it.
  • Nothing plays. Open the camera, tap the microphone, say a full sentence and pause. Check sensor.roomcall_last_call for the call and its delivery.
  • Start over. Remove RoomCall from the Home app, turn the option off and on again, and pair with the new code.