XPlora: Kids' watches that can be integrated into Home Assistant

Today I want to talk to you about Xplora‘s smartwatches for kids. Well, actually they’re not really smartwatches, since you can’t install messaging apps or games or anything like that… although there is apparently a way to flash it and change the original firmware… maybe at some point I’ll consider putting HAA or Mongoose or something like that on it, since I’m sure it’s possible… but the thing is these watches are really interesting for kids who are still too young to have a phone, but who we want to be able to call us at some point, know their location, and so on… but the best part is that you can integrate it with Home Assistant and from there bring it into HomeKit. Let me tell you more in detail:

Introduction to the Problem

As you know, I have a gazillion kids. The oldest turns 18 this year, the next one 12… but the youngest two are 11 and 9 respectively. The two oldest already have their own phones with the relevant Apple Screen Time restrictions, and the ban — under threat of a fatherly smack upside the head — on signing up for social media before turning 14, which I’ll remind you is the minimum age in Spain for a minor to legally hand over their personal data, no matter what the social network says… and honestly, at home I stick to this rule to the letter, probably from having spent so many years working in Cybersecurity and writing articles about privacy. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but for many years now I’ve been writing articles about cybersecurity and privacy aimed at parents for Vodafone’s Internet Seguro portal. But anyway, that doesn’t matter, this article isn’t a paid collaboration with either Vodafone or the folks at Xplora. The thing is, when we go out with our younger kids, since we live in a relatively safe and quiet area, both here and at the apartment in Valencia, the kids go off to play at the park while we stay at the café having something to drink. And sure, they do come by every once in a while, but if too much time passes without seeing them walk past the table, you start to worry a bit, especially when it starts getting dark and people begin leaving the park little by little. Sometimes I’ve even given them an AirTag to carry in their pocket so I could keep track of them, which let me roughly see their location if someone with a phone happened to pass nearby, but this past summer we bought them some walkie-talkies, and now we grab them every time we head out. They’re really useful and great for talking to them, letting them know we’re heading back up to the apartment, and so on. The walkies run on batteries and use a standard radio frequency — they’re nothing like toy walkies for kids, they’re the kind recommended for hiking trips and things like that. But of course, if they wander too far or the batteries die… well, you lose contact with them. Back in Valencia, in the development where our apartment is, there’s the beach, and nearby the sports center where we play padel and so on, and sometimes we’re at one end and they’re at the other, and the walkie’s radio signal just doesn’t reach. The thing is, by chance, a few months ago I stumbled upon those Xplora devices I mentioned. It’s not really a smartwatch, since there’s practically nothing you can do with it, but it is a digital wristwatch that carries a mobile phone SIM card. This SIM lets them make calls via good old GSM telephony and send text messages through the Xplora app — they don’t even use GSM technology to send SMS or anything like that, the messages just arrive through the Xplora app. The watch itself is a digital watch, as I said, with a bunch of customizable watchfaces — you can change the colors, set a background photo, it has WiFi connectivity for when you’re at home or on a known network and don’t want to burn through data, etc. Besides that, it has the messaging app I mentioned, an app that tells you the weather, a little calculator that’s quite handy if your kid hasn’t learned their multiplication tables yet… and that’s about it. You can’t install anything on the watch with the original firmware, nor can anyone add themselves to the contact list — and this is the coolest part: you, the parent, guardian, whoever, manage that contact list from your own phone, so if you only add your phone and your partner’s to the contact list, then only the two of you will be able to call them, nobody else. It’s like a walkie-talkie but with Movistar coverage in my case, so they can call you no matter where they are. On top of that, the device shares its location with the Xplora app, so from the app you can see at any moment where your child’s device is. It has other interesting features, like «school mode,» where you can set it up so it doesn’t receive calls, messages, or anything at all, or so it only receives calls from you in case something happens — although normally you’d just call the school directly anyway… In school mode it also can’t open the calculator or the cheap little camera it has, everything’s locked down, there’s just the digital clock and not much else. It also counts steps, and you can set movement challenges for your kid that earn them badges, kind of like on the Apple Watch, and that’s about it. You can also set up safe geolocation zones, so if your child leaves that safe zone — the park or whatever — it automatically sends you an alert, which can come in handy. It’s a bit of a privacy invasion, honestly — reminds me of those ankle monitors from the movies that go off if you step outside the allowed perimeter — but hey. Oh, and it has an alarm — the regular kind, like an alarm clock — which is useful for managing reminders for after-school activities, waking up in the morning, and so on. Also, it has IP68 protection, so they can shower with it on or submerge it up to a meter and a half deep for a maximum of 30 minutes… but honestly, what can I say, it’s best to have them take it off for swimming in the pool or the sea just in case… and besides, as you know, radio waves don’t travel underwater, so we won’t get real-time location or be able to call them easily. Either way, on the Xplora website there are two models: the XGo3, which is the most basic connected watch and costs around €80, and the X6Play, which costs around €140. Their Majesties the Three Kings brought my daughter the €140 one — thank goodness they brought it and I didn’t have to pay for it myself. Right now, they’re cheaper on the official Xplora website than on Amazon or anywhere else. For me, the most interesting part was being able to call them if we’re at the park or if they wander off somewhere, but honestly what I’m using the most right now is the real-time location… and I’m using it because I’ve integrated it with Home Assistant. There’s an integration on HACS, you know, the unofficial third-party add-on store for Home Assistant, which, once installed, lets us log into the Xplora portal and access the watch’s data. It’s not a local integration — no MQTT, no Bluetooth tracker, none of that — it just connects to the device through Xplora’s service, but honestly the integration works really, really well. It brings all the watch’s information into Home Assistant, so we can see the device’s remaining battery and have it send us an alert when the battery gets low, just like we’ve discussed before — I remind you we already covered the automation for getting a notification when a device has low battery, both in Home Assistant and in HomeKit — we can also see how many steps they’ve taken, whether they’re in a safe zone or not, and, most importantly, their location, which shows up in that Home Assistant Map tab, letting us see in real time where our child’s device is. As you know, I use Home Assistant as a universal bridge until Apple gets on my nerves, but whenever I integrate some new gadget, like in this case, I like to get everything set up perfectly just in case I ever need to manage it from that platform, so I’ve added the device to the low battery notifications and added all the usual zones where my kids might be to the map, so at a quick glance it tells me whether they’re at school, at home, at padel, or wherever — no need to even open the map to check. Pretty cool, I have to say. Once you have it in Home Assistant, it’s super easy to bring it over to HomeKit as if it were a light bulb, so in HomeKit I’ve named it Carla and put it in the fake room I have called People, so it «turns on,» so to speak, that bulb when Carla is home and turns it off when she’s out, so if I’m out and about, with a quick glance at the Home app, I can see which lights are on, with the family members’ names, and know whether they’re home or not. Yes, some of you might be thinking privacy… well, whatever. But hey, I’m the dad. Well, at least I love them like they’re my own. My older kids I already have on Apple’s Find My service, and they’re perfectly aware of it — in fact they use it too, and one of them has actually shown up at a Get Ready With Me session, which I’ve already told you about, or while my wife and I were having a coffee out on the street just to see if he could come join us — nobody has ever complained about privacy… not even Yago, the oldest, who turns 17 this year, and for whom the Find My service has actually helped us recover his phone a few times when he’d left it at some padel court or other. Once they come of age, I’ll give them the option to leave the Family group to protect their privacy — I certainly wouldn’t have liked my dad showing up somewhere dodgy where I was in the back seat of my Motoretta moped with my girlfriend — but if they decide to leave, they should know they’ll lose access to the Family iCloud services and will have to pay for their own purchases and backups. I’m like the Google of parents — I’ll give you all this in exchange for your data. I’ll say it again: the device itself isn’t cheap, but it can save us from a scare or two. Don’t buy it just because, if you don’t actually need it, okay? In my case, my kids have quite a bit of independence and freedom, and sometimes they say they’re heading to the corner store to buy poster board, but I know that’s not the case for every family, and it might not solve any real need for you.