Question: Current state of Xplora API and IP blocking?

[itsDNNS]

Hey @Ludy87,

I stumbled across your archived HA integration and the pyxplora_api library while looking for a way to show my kids' Xplora watches in Home Assistant. I'd love to see their location on the HA map alongside the rest of the family.

I noticed the HA integration got archived after the IP blocking issue (#498 in xplora_watch), but the pyxplora_api library is still actively maintained. That made me curious:

• Do you know if Xplora has changed anything regarding their IP blocking policy since then?
• Would a conservative polling interval (e.g. every 15-30 minutes) avoid the blocking, or is any third-party API usage risky?
• Would you be open to someone building a new lightweight HA integration on top of pyxplora_api, or is there a fundamental reason you archived the HA side?

Totally understand if this is a dead end, just wanted to ask before giving up on the idea. Thanks for maintaining the API library either way!

[palchrb]

I'm currently messing around with making a go-bridge between matrix and xplora (to mainly bridge chats). https://github.com/palchrb/matrix-xplora It works by registrering as an android device so we can receive the FCM push messages (and with push based messages, i am hoping this means you fly under the radar versus polling based solutions). To me based on some initial tests, it seems like location updates is a separate FCM push event, so might be that the xplora then pushes all location updates as a new FCM push event. I think this could be an excellent opportunity to make a push based location monitoring, but need to do some more testing to see if it consistently pushes all new location updates over time or not. The below is not a complete push payload, just showing an example of what cam through

 DBG Received FCM push from Xplora \
component=xplora-client \
fcm_payload={
  "content": {
    "addr": "[REDACTED_ADDRESS]",
    "battery": 43,
    "city": "[REDACTED_CITY]",
    "country": "Norway",
    "country_abbr": "NO",
    "device_id": "[REDACTED_DEVICE_ID]",
    "is_charging": 0,
    "lat": 59.000000,
    "lng": 10.00000,
    "locate_type": "gps",

I'm not actively looking to make such a home assistant integration myself, just sharing what i have seen over the past days. I am no expert on xplora or what they react negatively to, but this seems like it could be worth exploring!

[ElVit]

Hi @Ludy87,
I'm also still a happy user of your great HA integration xplora_watch until now.
I think there are still a lot of users which are not banned while still using your integration.
You probably crossed the limit while testing your integration.
But I think if you use this HA integration in a normal way (like tracking the location), your IP shouldn't be blocked.
At least my IP is still not blocked 😄.
Please think about to reopen your repository, maybe we can find togher a solution.
If you need help with testing I'm willing to help you (also in german 😉).

[erikosvaldsson]

For what its worth, I share the experience of @ElVit. I however got issues recently with access to the API used by this project, I think because of Xplora migrating to the new API used by the new Xplora app.
I have managed to reverse engineer the new API and would be happy to share my finding for both this and the xplora_watch HA integration if the integration would be de-archived :)