Could someone technical please help fill a gap in my little brain?
What actually, is the point of both the Tuya app and the Tuya integration in Home Assistant?
Is it just the initial device setup?
In which case, after setup, isn’t the future to dispense with both app and integration, and then have HA do the firmware updates?
Honestly, I’m fine with having both so the question is really more about the direction iot is taking.
It is also a mild irritation that I have to have all these iot apps and accounts.
The Tuya and Smartlife apps are needed to connect the Tuya WiFi based devices to the account that you connect via the intergration.
You only need this for as stated the WiFi versions of them, the Tuya Zigbee versions are able to be used without the applications and via Z2MQTT and ZHA directly instead.
Hello tattingstone,
Tuya’s WIFI internals are encrypted. There used to be a way to eliminate needing the Tuya app to get to those, but no longer. There is one of the MCA chips that has a workaround, burt basically you have to get in thru the Tuya smart life app and then Tuya gives you an access point thru them or you van use one of the Custom Integrations from GitHub that you can load thru HACS to get access after you get initial connection.
Zigbee is open and not encrypted.