Does Tuya require an online service to be able to connect to the smart plugs or is is strictly local?
It needs a connection to a cloud server.
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Thanks, @tom_l - then it’s not for me.
Basically noe of my IOT devices ae allowed internet access.
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Likewise. I was looking at the Tuya/Kogan glass panel heaters until I discovered that.
AFAIR, there is a GitHub project that has figured out the Tuya protocol, and can communicate directly with the devices. I’ve not tried it but I’ve read of others who’ve been successful. You might have to search a bit.
Just a quick - and unfortunately rather frustrated - update:
I received 2 S31s earlier today and have since tried to make them work.
After a lot of trial & error I finally managed to flash one of them with the Tasmota firmware:
Simplest way to flash ESP8266 and Sonoff | No command line here!
Took me a while to figure out that you need to hold the on/off button while plugging in the USB connection - which is also not easy to do when you only have two hands,
What I’m still struggling with, though, is to get the S31 connected to the built-in HA MQTT server - all my other MQTT challenges were, while not without the occasional hiccup, much easier to figure out.
Here I’m now stuck with the error message in the console:
MQT: Connect failed to 192.168.7.14:1883, rc -4. Retry in 10 sec
and I cannot figure out how to fix it - I have no idea why my config would result in a MQTT_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT.
I don’t use any credentials on my mqtt server and I am concerned it might have to do with that.
Perhaps a screenshot of the Configure MQTT screen in your S31 may be useful?
I’m using the Mosquitto broker, by the way, as the HA documentation recommended using something other than the built-in version.
Here you go - screenshot of the config screen as well as of the message I see in the console panel when I amend the configuration.
Config screen - whenever I delete the entries in the user and password fields, the get re-populated as shown.:
Console message - seems to push user name and password although they both are supposed to be empty:
Is there a way to push the config manually in the console with the correct parameters?
Okay, found it 
After setting everything else through the config interface (web) I sent these two commands through the console:
- MqttPassword 0
- MqttUser 0
Not sure, if it can be set in the GUI as well, will try it with the 2nd plug I have once I flashed it.
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And: yes!
The configuration with no user and no password can be done from teh GUI as well.
Just enter 0 in the User and 0 in the Password fields.
Wish this was documented somewhere so that one could actually find it easily, e.g. in the interface itself 
how did you add the LITPED Wifi Smart Plug to HA? sorry for the very basic question as I’m very new to HA. I’ve been able to add devices by adding lines to configuration.yaml but I don’t know what to add for this plug
I configured them with the smart-life/tuya app that came with it. Set up the interface in my configuration.yaml:
tuya:
username: !secret tuya_username
password: !secret tuya_password
country_code: 1
platform: smart_life
and voila… I see the switches in my attributes in HA with really funky names: (i.e.: switch.06200046bcddc2e63c3b)
Thanks Dixey that worked
these switches seem to need internet access to work. I have a tplink where I used their app to set it up then from my router I assigned it a static ip and blocked the ip from internet access. It stopped working via the tplink app but it still works in HA. I guess I can’t do something like that with these.
I hear rumors that some folks here are working on that local control thing for tuya/smart-life stuff. I do not know the status of it at this time.
What component is required to get these LITSPED devices to work?
Just the tuya: parameters in your configuration.yaml file. See a few comments above.
I picked up the Costco plugs. Made a mistake initially by updating the firmware. Now they can’t be flashed with Tasmota. So I returned them and bought another couple. Flashed Tasmota OTA and set up an MQTT add-on in Home Assistant. They work great.
My only issue is that the little LED light on the plug doesn’t light up anymore but I can live with that.
I’m going to try to take one apart to see if i can isolate the power to the plug and use it as a dry contact and then I’ll hook it up as a garage door opener.
You can def fix that… There was a firmware a week or so ago that did that so maybe try later Tasmota… and you might need to change the module or use a template in Tasmota but you can fix that for sure.
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Thanks. I found a YouTube video that explains how to set it up on a trial and error basis.
Better documentation here: https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/wiki/CE-Smart-Home---LA-WF3-Wifi-Plug-(TYWE2S)