Hi all.
I’ve been a big fan of z-wave for 5 years now.
I see a couple of smart plugs and smart bulbs on black Friday, that work on WiFi and ultimately Tuya.
I’ve got the bulbs linked in my tuya app now, that’s good. The bulbs recommended the plus minus app but I’m guessing tuya has better interoperability with ha?
What I want to know is, now the app sees the bulbs, since I have my home assistant tuya integration installed and configured, should I now see them in home assistant?
I presume home assistant will be talking to the tuya servers to turn the bulbs on/off or is it all done at a local level?
You need them connected to either the tuya app or the smartlife app, and yes, it goes through the tuya cloud.
You can also look into flashing them with Tasmota. That will allow them to communicate directly with the server without any need for cloud access. Caveats: Many tuya devices have been patched so that you cannot flash them over the air. I believe MQTT is required, so if you’re already using openzwave, it will be a smoother transition. This might be a rabbit hole for you. Just throwing out another option.
Resources if you’re curious.
Tuya-convert github
Video tutorial
The only problem : more and more tuya wifi devices do not have an esp anymore. That is why I stopped buying tuya wifi devices.
There are custom components to use toya local, not through cloud, no firmware flashing needed
francisp, definitely some are using different hardware. Took me a bunch of different bulbs to find some that work. For anyone interested, I can vouch for all of the Lohas brand bulbs on amazon right now. We have A19, E12 and BR30. All can be flashed and we’re actually really happy with the bulbs.
I didn’t know there were options to use tuya locally. Will look into that when I’m unable to flash any more bulbs. For now, while I was able to find flashable ones, I’ve stocked up with a boatload of them.