Having it’s own data connection is needed for the part where I want to track it when it’s not near a phone (or wifi). If it drains the battery faster then that’s just what will happen but I don’t see an alternative.

It doesn’t need to have a long battery life anyway, I can’t see it needing to last more than 6 hours or so.

Sounds good! I’ll make an impulse purchase before I talk myself out of it 🙂.

My actual watch problem can be for after I work out what I can do with these 😆

Ah so it sounds like I just buy something that has an antenna and work it out from there?

The hardware doesn’t look too expensive so I might just buy some and give it a go 🙂. Thanks for all your help!

For the home assistant thing, how would I connect Meshtastic? I couldn’t really work that part out. I assume some receiver device must exist that you plug in with a USB port in order to use the Home Assistant integration?

Thanks I think I underestimated how much such a watch would cost. Holy hell, more than many phones.

Technically the watch would not be for a child, but rather that they could take with them as necessary. It could very well be my watch that I lend to them on occasion, but I’m not sure I can justify the cost for me either 😅

I might try to see if I can import the TickTalk you suggested somehow, though I’m also considering the meshtastic option someone else mentioned because it sounds like a cool thing to play with haha

Looks like they don’t ship here anyway 🤷

I also saw a reddit thread where everyone with the TickTalk 5 was saying how bad the tracking was. Hopefully they sorted that with the 6. But I guess for me it’s ruled out if I can’t actually buy one.

What I am after is to live track a watch that is not near my phone. Most smart watches won’t allow that, so I’m basically asking for recommendations of watches that have their own GPS and data connection independent of a phone, though I’ve given more detail to be clear about what I’m trying to achieve.

Thanks for the suggestion, I’m definitely keen on something the kids find boring! It mentions a $10 per month subscription in the US. Is that for the data connection? I assume you can use it outside the US if you get your own data plan?

Which part?

From my understanding, watches that have their own data connection and GPS do exist, and some of those run Wear OS which has a Home Assistant app. Shouldn’t any watch with these features meet most of my requirements?

I was aware getting a custom ROM on a watch like GrapheneOS would probably be too much, but I thought the general idea of a watch that independently reports to HA should be possible?

I don’t think any of the T-Watches have cameras. But you’re right about the meshtastic bandwidth, it’s more for some simple messages.

Sorry I misread, it said speaker and microphone. So it can do voice calls?

Was I right about just getting two watches for communication? Is there a good crash course on understanding this stuff?

As I understand it Meshtastic is for messages as the bandwidth is really low at those frequencies. But it has a camera and microphone, so can you actually do video calls?

I am not convinced this is the answer I’m looking for, but I am intrigued enough to possibly buy one anyway. Would you get two so you could call between them? I’m just not really sure how this works!

I couldn’t find a map of nodes so I’m not sure how the network is here, but the main use case is near my house (so the kids can go and play with the neighbourhood kids, which they do anyway but I’d like a way to find them at dinner time). So if the network isn’t great here I assume I can put up my own node - understanding nothing about meshtastic…

I got that far, I’m looking for recommendations on what hardware to purchase 🙂

I was hoping someone had done it and could report back.

Well, from what I can tell, there are watches with their own data connection and GPS, and it seems Home Assistant has a Wear OS app: https://companion.home-assistant.io/docs/wear-os/

So in theory what I want to achieve should be doable outside of some of my preferences, but I have zero experience with any smart watch so I was hoping for some advice before I spend hundreds on one.

Oh also it kept telling me my selected username was invalid, while giving no indication as to why. In the end I think it was because it had the word “host” in it (actually, it was “ghost”, but apparently they don’t allow “host”).

I’ve tried again with a different recovery email and it still said no, please contact support. But I couldn’t find a link to contact support, only a knowledgebase, so I’m probably going to go with mailbox.org instead. I have created a trial account there without issue.

They still have free accounts. I tried to sign up, to do so I needed to enter a backup email. I used a simplelogin one and now I’m blocked and have to wait 24 hours to try again 🤦

I recently made a post asking for email providers, and no one has yet mentioned Mailfence, I hadn’t heard of it until seeing this post. What are people’s thoughts on it?

I think it’s fine. Proton is still better than big tech. I want to move away from Proton for myself but that’s because I am not tied to an address (custom domain) and am happy to do the switch. I would still encourage Proton over big tech for regular people. We do the best we can do.

Yeah I saw that too, but that doesn’t seem likely to have been available in medieval times.

Can you quote the section you are referring to? I can’t see your title claim in the linked article.

Toothpaste instructions often tell you to rinse with a small amount of water, but dentists here always say not to.

And floss before brushing, so you can rinse goop out before the toothpaste goes in.