I'm trying to set up a video call between a Lenovo Z580 laptop and a Samsung Ace 2 Android smart phone using google+.
The laptop is running Ubuntu 14.04 with Empathy and the phone is using Hangout.
I can set up an IM conversation despite the fact that Empathy says the phone is off-line (small yellow triangle).
The Empathy help file says click on the tiny round icon (might be a camera but it's not clear what it is). I can't do that as there is no icon. If I click the camera icon in Hangout the phone appears to be calling the laptop, but nothing happens on the laptop.
So how do I set up a Video call call using Empathy and google+?
Terry
To the best of my knowledge, this is no longer supported -- in late 2013, Google announced that they were "dropping" XMPP support. What this has meant in practice is that multi-protocol chat clients are still able to connect to Google Talk via the existing XMPP authentication mechanism, just as it's still possible to chat with non-Gmail XMPP contacts from the sidebar chat within Gmail, but XMPP is no longer supported for voice or video, as their Hangouts implementation is proprietary. It's not clear whether they'll eventually disable XMPP for regular instant messaging as well, but I expect and hope not.
The only way to do a Google voice or video call at this point is through the browser -- I believe there's a desktop client for Windows and ChromeOS which you might be able to get working through Wine or Archon, respectively, but it wouldn't have the same level of desktop integration or multi-protocol support as Pidgin and Empathy.