I have a bunch of Tuya based devices (lamps, power plugs, smart breakers) and having read the HA Green promise about local solution and privacy, I bought HA Green. Now I learned that the integrate Tuya devices I have to set up a Tuya cloud account.
I’m not a techie anymore (I was 40+ years ago) and keep wondering if there is a straightforward way to integrate Tuya devices locally to HA Green? Would it be possible to connect a USB WiFi (+Bluetooth for Ruuvi Tags) stick to HA Green for the sole purpose of communicating with Tuya devices directly, without opening my home to Chinese servers?
There are a few local Tuya integrationa that will work after obtaining a local key for your device… Straightforward it is not. Getting the key can be complicated.
Look for “local Tuya” on HACS for at least one Tuya integration that runs locally.
Also you may need to renew said local key on occasion which involves getting Tuya to re-enable your Tuya IoT cloud developer account every 6 or so months.
Many older Tuya devices were esp32 under the hood and could be flashed to something controlled locally with esphome or tasmota but that’s becoming a rare case with new stuff.
And now you know why a lot of us avoid Tuya devices like the plage. Personality I will only buy a Tuya device if it’s literally the only option (such as my sunbeam electric blanket) in a device class. Otherwise zigbee ZWave esp32 and other local modes of communication are my choices.
The easiest way to get Tuya integration is using beta software from Tuya which eliminates the complexities of the present Tuya integration. To my experience, it is easy and works well for beta software.
Thanks for responding. Now I understand the big mistake I made.
It all started when I needed three small enough light bulbs (Ø45 mm) with E27 socket and found nice and inexpensive Smart bulbs with sooo easy WiFi control. Now I have 10 Tuya devices (3 lamps, 2 LED stripes, 2 power plugs and 3 breakers). I wonder, would it be easier to replace all of them…
For me carry on with Tuya. Their new smartlife integration is relatively easy to setup and works well. I have used it on systems with hundreds of active devices of various types. So go ahead without hesitation and in full confidence with the smartlife integration.
I am trying to do this, but don’t understand how to copy the unzipped file to the HA file system. #FeelingStupid.
Unzip it and copy the custom_components/smartlife folder to the Home Assistant configuration directory, for example, ~/.homeassistant .
