Cheap Tuya / Smart Life cameras → local RTSP for Frigate (no ONVIF, no firmware flash)

Stock Tuya / Smart Life / iSmartLife cameras have no ONVIF and no RTSP checkbox. The live view is locked to the vendor app (and usually a cloud subscription if you want a second viewer).

I published a small local bridge so those cams show up as a normal RTSP URL for Frigate, go2rtc, Agent DVR, or a Generic Camera:

No firmware flash. Scan a QR in the app you already have, then:

rtsp://<bridge>:8554/<CameraName>/hd

On a Linux / HA host next to Frigate:

git clone https://github.com/DanEng1982/tuya-rtsp-bridge.git
cd tuya-rtsp-bridge
docker compose up -d --build

Open http://<ha-host>:8787, pick the same region as the phone app, Create QR, confirm in Smart Life. Session stays in ./data — not in git.

Honest limits:

  • Still no ONVIF
  • Signaling still uses Tuya; on the LAN the video is usually camera → this box
  • Many of these cams only put ~10 fps in the HD bitstream
  • Do not also run the official Tuya / tuya:// path on the same cameras (it steals the live session)

RTSP engine is seydx/tuya-ipc-terminal (MIT). Windows installer and Arch notes are in the repo if you do not want Docker.

Happy to take camera-model reports (app + region) as GitHub issues.

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