Tuya and local tuya together

Configuration
#1

Tuya and Local Tuya together

First, I want to congratulate Local Tuya developers in making it much easier to add devices by importing the local key automatically. That is a great improvement!

I would nevertheless like to make a plea to make it easier to run Tuya and Local Tuya side by side in HA. I would ideally like to have all my Wi-Fi devices under Local Tuya but I cannot migrate all of them because

  1. some give errors in Local Tuya (reported separately as bugs)
  2. some are recognised but unsupported - i.e. they have no meaningful entities. E.g. I use an IR blaster as universal remote and rely on Smart Life scenes for each button push; I can only do this with cloud Tuya.
  3. some have a lot of entities and I need more time to work out which is which before I can use them meaningfully under Local Tuya.

You CAN run both together, but it takes a lot of work. When you add a device to Local Tuya is it not removed from cloud Tuya so the device is in HA twice. The name is the same in each because they originate from the same Smart Life app. Normally HA keeps the entity ids distinct by adding a suffix like “_2” but it can still get very confusing when editing automations, scripts etc. and lead to errors.

My approach is: for each device in Tuya that I also have in Local Tuya, I edit the name by adding XXX to the end, I assign it to an area called DEFUNCT and I disable it. I say yes to renaming the entities accordingly. I also delete any ‘Switch by X’ entities associated with the cloud Tuya version of the device.

These measures make it easier to identify the correct version of the device to use in automations, scripts etc. I then go back to Local Tuya and edit the suffixes from the entity ids, so they are as they were before. That does not mean they are re-linked to automations, scripts etc., though; I still have to do that manually - including the re-creation of all Switch by X helpers. On several occasions I have encountered the “this device has no unique id” error – then you have to delete the device from Local Tuya and start again.

I welcome comments from anyone with a simpler approach than mine!

It would be great if the developers could make this process easier. What I really want is to have the Local Tuya version of the device ‘take over’ from the old cloud Tuya version - i.e. take on the same entity ids and replace the entities in Switch by X helpers, automations, scripts etc. I would be happy for the old version of the device and its entities to disappear; at least it should be automatically disabled and have its name and entity ids changed to something different.

Any thoughts?

2 Likes
#2

Hi Andrew,
I will be watching this thread closely as I have friends that are frustrated with the Smart Life app to “Try” to control 34 Costco Globe WB2S Product name 50323 (Tuya) ceiling lights in 6 areas.
I did testing with a spare light, and wound up with the Zombie state. I tried a 2nd light, and the internal transformer / power supply failed due to a bad LED fixture.
I now have 4 NEW fixtures that I am “reluctant” to set up. I have watched many set up tutorials, but most comments sound like HA users are frustrated,
Do I dive in and try to figure this out OR spend time working on their Smart Life app to “fix” the current control issues that they are experiencing.
In regards to your comment about the IR blaster, is it Tuya based? I am trying to understand what the product is, to see if there is any other dashboard / ESP button or ESP IR receiver option for calling scenes.
Your post has some good information, I hope others join in with other possible solutions.
Thank you,
Bob

#3

I just checked that if you install and configure Local Tuya you can not remove all devices into Tuya cloud, I did it and surprisingly all devices added into local Tuya stop working. What happens is (according to my experience) is you have to keep all devices into Tuya cloud, because if you delete a device an recreate it you will have diferents local keys, so as far as I can see the if next month Tuya decide to price for services (wich today they are free…) you have to pay in order to use that device, worst case scenario if Tuya broke, you will have an important amount of scraped devices (I heard that if you install Local Tuya the control of the device will be yous forever (as local tuya exist of course), so, local tuya is just to improve resposivines, just that, Brgds

#4

Hi cletus5,
Since my last post, I did install LocalTuya on a system for my friend and it has been working for about a month now.
I used the instructions from the Mark Watt “LocalTuya” youtube tutorials. He used Bluestacks to extract the local keys from the Smartlife App. The method worked well, and I did not have to install Tuya or use a Tuya developer account.
Time will tell, but so far so good!

1 Like
#5

ok, I see…
I saw the video, but my question still in the air… if you get all info for your related devices, and you use Mark’s tool or the hard way (IOT TUYA web page) once you have set all local tuya, if you delete the devices from TUYA app (into your phone) you will lost the device into local tuya, and if you create the same device again, you will notice that the local key will be different, still, if tuya app disapear or Tuya goes broke all your devices will turn into scrap , best regards

#6

That is correct, you have to leave them in the cloud and manually disable the cloud version of the devices in HA so that it is clear to the automations which one to use.

Surprisingly, I found responsiveness is not necessarily improved that much so I am less worried now about switching everything to local. If, as is often the case, a device is tricky to implement in local Tuya, I just leave it in the cloud.

#7

Hello everyone, I also experience this issue, and I don’t understand anything, I don’t think that this is the proper way how to work, I am afraid what will happen in some months, when the trial version of the tuya cloud will expire.

Local tuya was a great integration to work not depending of tuya cloud… and for my surprise, we still need the cloud, and it does jot work without internet as well… has not sense.

Which is the advantage to integrate local to instead of local?