Hotspot drops connection when idle for a few minutes (iPhone 11, iOS 15.1)

Hi,

I use my iPhone to provide a hotspot every Sunday in Church. I connect to a laptop, which has a video camera and link to sound system. This set up is used to host a Zoom session to share the service with those isolating / unable to attend.

About 15 minutes before start I set everything up and test it. Then end the zoom session. A few minutes before start I re-start the Zoom session - but the hotspot will have dropped out. I have to stop it and restart and let the laptop reconnect. Then the connection stays stable for the duration of the Zoom session - about an hour.

It seems the session drops if left idle for more than a couple of minutes. This rather makes a mockery of setting everything up in advance and testing it and certainly gave me a bit of a start the first few times it happened.

Any idea how I can change the connection to keep it live (without leaving Zoom session running, using data).

thanks.

btw - the reason for this complicated setup rather than hosting the zoom session on my phone is simply to have access to a good optical zoom camera and assortment of audio inputs.