This project started with a pretty simple ask from my wife: "Can you make it so I can FaceTime our daughter?"
Should've been easy. Except my wife's on Android and our daughter's on iPhone, so FaceTime was a non-starter, and none of the "just use WhatsApp" workarounds ever actually stuck for a family that just wants to tap one button and see each other's faces.
Sure, there are a dozen apps that already solve this. But I'm a developer, and "why use something when you can build it" apparently beats "why would you do that to yourself." So I built Callmata.
It's a private, cross-platform video calling app for families: register once, add everyone in your household, and after that it's just names on a screen. Tap one, and it rings that person on push notification and text, on whatever device they happen to be holding. No app store, no accounts to juggle, same experience whether you're on an iPhone, an Android phone, or a laptop.
Under the hood: Next.js + TypeScript, WebRTC video via Daily, Redis-backed per-family storage, phone-verified self-serve registration, PIN-based sign-in (no passwords to forget), and rate-limiting/CAPTCHA guardrails to keep it from being abused now that any family can spin up their own space.
It's still a demo/portfolio build rather than a commercial product, but it's fully functional end to end — and it solved the actual problem my wife asked me to solve, which is more than I can say for most of my side projects.
If you want to poke around: www.callmata.com
