Comments on: Use a Mac as a Security Camera And Watch Live Video Remotely From an iPhone or iPad

By: FaceTime Over Cellular Expands to More AT&T iPhones, Check if Yours Works Too

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 20:41:59 +0000

[...] not interested in the video chatting aspect, FaceTime has a variety of other uses, including using the feature as a home security camera. stLight.options({ publisher:'fe5e0a84-1fac-40de-8014-9f89fc1cbe6a' [...]

By: free

free — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 15:53:32 +0000

lol wilner, auto accept would have been crafted into the program but then it would probably be something they’d have to charge you for

By: wilner

wilner — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 14:49:49 +0000

Why cannot this be done without having to use the Terminal application to enter the “default” commands in MacOS (Mach/Linux/Unix)? I thought the Mac was supposed to help people get away from arcane command line entries likes this, reminiscent of DOS and command-line Unix/Linux.

By: Dave A

Dave A — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:34:41 +0000

Logging in with Logmein (pun intended) will significantly slow down framerate and image quality. This is a really basic solution. A better war would be to get a dvr that has an iapp and then allow traffic to come in and out of your network to view on your iphone/ipad. This will work but more a novelty. An alternative is a dvr with iphone support (http://www.a1securitycameras.com/A1-UDR-7004-5GB-Unitek-DVR.html). There are some at costco and sams too that are prepackaged which also have apps.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 09 May 2012 01:44:49 +0000

I have it working. Interesting. But to “spy” on someone with out them knowing what your doing, you must turn on the screen saver by clicking “Test” in Sys Pref. This hides the FaceTime screen. The green light is still on though. I was hoping that would be off. But if all you want to do is see in your home from a far, this is pretty cool. I will have to test this on the dog, call her and make look for me in the house.

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:29:55 +0000

Having difficulty entering the command to auto accept incoming FaceTime calls.

defaults write com.apple.FaceTime AutoAcceptInvites -bool YES

Tried to get help from Apple tech. Apparently they do not have this application in their database?

Would appreciate someone help. Thanks

By: John

John — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:52:16 +0000

When I use “NO” instead of “YES” in this command I get this:
“Unexpected argument NO; leaving defaults unchanged.” And FaceTime still picks up automatically.

By: Sam143

Sam143 — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:39:21 +0000

Can we do it with Iphone & Ipod touch??

By: Sam143

Sam143 — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:38:10 +0000

Can we done it with Iphone & Ipod touch

By: 911

911 — Sat, 05 May 2012 22:21:13 +0000

Yep, it’s basically opens yourself up for massive invasions of privacy.

By: Nesty

Nesty — Sat, 05 May 2012 20:24:01 +0000

Sadly, it does not work as expected. It will accept all the incoming Facetime calls. If you change the settings back to NO, Quit Facetime and open it again to use the new settings.

By: 911

911 — Sat, 05 May 2012 04:59:53 +0000

Yeah, I don’t know about this.. I’m pretty sure I followed the steps correctly so it would ‘only accept calls from myself’ – and I found out today that it was immediately automatically connecting for everyone.. Lets just say, this could have been bad.

By: sergio

sergio — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:02:31 +0000

the big problem is that “… AutoAcceptInvites -bool YES” will accept ALL incoming calls
and “… AutoAcceptInvitesFrom -array-add …” wont change anything about accepting incoming calls.

And restarting from scratch (“defaults delete AutoAcceptInvites…”) and then executing only “… AutoAcceptInvitesFrom -array-add …” will accept NO incoming call.

Finally you have 2 choices :
- autoaccepting all incoming calls
- autoaccepting no incoming call

I tried with 2 iPhones 2 Mac and 1 iPad and I checked the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.FaceTime.plist : no way.

not a great tip !
Or I missed something ???

By: John

John — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:38:33 +0000

Change the YES to NO.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:47:36 +0000

Use something like LogMeIn or SplashTop on the iPhone or iPad to establish a remote desktop connection and hide the window.

Some goes for the following comment about wanting to close Facetime after you are done using it.