Intercom Features
Here are some features that would make Portal very useful. I am looking for a home intercom solution, but Portal would be awkward.
- I need to call room to room. Right now as I understand it, I would need to create an Facebook account for each room and call the room by its account. It would be nice if you have multiple Portals under the same Facebook account that you could call from one Portal (or your phone) to a specific room.
- I would like to be able to create groups ahead of time and make a group call right from the get go instead of adding people after.
- I would like to be able to broadcast to a group as well. Nucleus and Alexa both have that feature. It could just be an announcement like “Dinner is ready”.
I realize Portal is currently targeted as being used for distant people to stay in touch, but with some simple tweaking you can make it a very good home automation/intercom system and sell multiple devices per household much more easily.
Anonymous
shared this idea
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Nate Gardner
commented
This would be great. A broadcast mode would also be awesome (just like Nest Mini). Video calling between rooms would be really handy for short conversations. If the video feed preview automatically pops up or audio automatically starts playing, that's even better.
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VJ
commented
This will be useful feature and portal should include this to make intercom easier.
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Fred commented
The Amazon Echo has a feature called "announce" which does exactly this. I had asked Amazon to come up with some kind of intercom between devices and then finally did. Since it works with Alexa, I'm wondering if the Portal could support this feature.
You don't have to have separate accounts, just multiple Echos and the command is Alexa "announce" or the word "broadcast" can be used. Alexa then asked what the announcement is and you say something. When my wife uses it she will say, "Fred, I need you.". At this point, all the Echos in our house do the following. A tone and Alexa says " announcement" and then my wife's own voice is played back.
This is a great feature since we own 8 Echos. She would not know which one I might be near so by using this feature, no matter where I am I'll hear her message in her own voice. I also own two Portals. So allowing this feature to cross platform would be great.
Fred
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Anonymous
commented
It would be nice to use it as a Video-Intercom without the need for anybody to sign in. Just have an anonymous account or something similar to that. One use case would be for a customer to be able to reach out another staff member at a remote location. I would like to buy one unit for each office. that could be used in a conference room, or for a customer consultation meeting.
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Chris
commented
Amazon Echo devices do this well. My four year old frequently calls and drops in (calls where it auto answers on the other end) on me while I'm in the living room and he is in his room. Portal includes Alexa, but doesn't support Alexa calling or drop in features. Activating these features would be an easy way to implement intercom services with millions that already own an echo device.