To tell the truth, I have hear about Tuya sometime here and other places like “I just flash this device with Tuya” so I was thinking it was some open source protocol or something.
What I understand now it is a company name Tuya and many brands use they software but make own client or use Tuya client.
So I did get curious and did buy two devices and use them in Tuya and now I have got it to work with Home Assistant.
Now someone told me to use Local Tuya and I guess one big advantage is that they are
not dependent on the internet.
But I have read a little here that Local Tuya is not so easy and can sometimes stop working.
So I wonder how many use Tuya as it is and how many use Local Tuya.
People that have gone over to Local Tuya, are you satisfied with the choice?
I can run both Tuya and Local Tuya on my Home Assistant?
The Tuya devices used to be flashable with Tasmota, but they made that harder by changing the chipsets. Cloudcutter allows for a similar approach.
The two “local” integrations (and there’s at least one more I couldn’t be bothered searching for) aim to provide different ways of providing local access, when it works.
Tuya is a “native” integration in HA( entirely cloud depended ), next to this i believe localtuya is mostly used ( and easy to use ) and supports many various brands, i.e Deltaco, Nedis etc
I have hear about Tasmota too but I’m not into flash any device if it not necessary or extreme simple to do.
I have done it with IM sensor and use telink im flasher to flash it and that was simple
In the end i guess it depends upon which devices you have, or intend to get/use
i.e Tapo devices might be better in Tapo, etc. etc.
But plain cheap devices, in the Tuya “area”, as you mention, many brands use the Tuya firmware
Hi, I tried using localtuya(GitHub - rospogrigio/localtuya: local handling for Tuya devices) but ran into issues with my Feit color bulbs and energy sensing smart plugs. Then recently I tried tuya-local (GitHub - make-all/tuya-local: Local support for Tuya devices in Home Assistant). I had more success with this integration. With that, I can change bulb colors and check smart plugs energy sensors from home assistant. I was not able to get my other devices e.g. humidity sensor working with either of the integrations. May be these can be resolved but I was not able to. I believe each has something to offer. I was not just able to use them for all of my tuya devices. Just sharing my experience. Good luck.
I’ve got a mix of Tuya and Tuya Local (link included because it’s very hard to differentiate between them based on name). For a while I was having issues with Arlec devices going unavailable with Tuya, so thought local might help - it didn’t. So I didn’t convert any others.
The Tuya integration is easier to set up, and is done once for all devices, rather than for each like Tuya Local. And I’ve had no problems with the speed/reliabliity of the cloud service (ymmv).
One of the key things to understand for Tuya is the difference between skinned apps and HA integrations.
Hardware suppliers provide a skinned version of the Tuya phone app to try to keep you buying their products. So if you buy 3 from different suppliers, you can either have 3 different apps running on your phone, or the generic one from Tuya. To complicate matters further, Tuya themselves provide two versions - Tuya Smart and Smart Life. So firstly, you should be using one of the two from Tuya rather than multiple of those from suppliers. I’m using “Tuya Smart” from before “Smart Life” existed (I think, it’s very confusing).
There is only one official Tuya integration for HA, but anybody can create their own version too, which is how we’ve ended up with more than one “Tuya Local” / “Local Tuya”.
To (hopefully) clear up one other matter, there is a thing called Tuya Convert which can replace the Tuya firmware on devices with Tasmota. This would then work with the HA Tasmota integration. This doesn’t work for all Tuya devices, and unless you’ve got a lot of other Tasmota devices, there should be no need to go down that path.
To summarize - one of the benefits / weaknesses (depending on your view on any given day) of white-labelling and open source, is there can be many ways to skin the cat, and Tuya is a prime example.
Just to verify -
Once I installed localtuya (or a similar variant), I am no longer dependent on Tuya cloud / Tuya IoT Platform? I will no longer be required to tuya subscrption in order to integrate tuya products to HA?
You will need at least a developer account with Tuya so retrieve the new/changed keys of your Tuya WiFi based devices because those keys will change whenever your Tuya devices are getting reseted.
Ok, and does such a Developer Account requires a paid subscription, as a standard tuya developer needs (the one that you need to extend when it expires)?
And is there no way to get around this?
I just don’t want to be dependent on any manufacturer.
Thanks
No, that developer account doesn’t need a paid subscription. At least I didn’t pay a dime and was never asked to do so. Maybe this has changed? I opened that account in late 2020.
Nevertheless you will be always dependent on Tuya because besides of needing that Smart Life-App to pair and re-pair devices you wont get around it to retrieve the new key(s) whenever one of those devices are reseted or whenever you add a new device. To retrieve those keys is trivial though.
Anyway, the main reason why I finally moved away from Tuya WiFi driven devices is exactly the Tuya cloud dependency. It was quite a PIA (and costly) to switch 35+ devices to Zigbee (still 3 Tuya WiFi devices to go) but I don’t regret the decision to do so.
If you want to be real foreign cloud-free choose ESP/Tasmota/Zigbee but stay away from Tuya WiFi.
Thanks Tamsy. So I was working with HA and Tuya for about 2 years, and a month ago I replaced my HA hardware so I needed to re-integrate Tuya into my system. In order to do that I needed to create an account for Tuya Cloud, which found out to be expired after only one month. Thereafter you need to ask them to extend the subscription, while providing them with good reasons why you want to do so, and relying only on their good will and kindness, as if they were rullers of a monarchy. So today I received a confirmation for their approval of my subscription for additional 6 months, and suddenly all my Tuya devices appeared again on my HA. This is crazy.
Also, the entire Tuya Cloud web interface UX is terrible and not user-friendly at all.
Totally understand why you invested so much efforts in replacing your 35+ Tuya devices. I am confident it was worth it. May I ask what alternative platform/eco-system did you choose to work with? Have you considered Shelly products? I understand that they can be managed locally by design.
I am using Tasmota flashable devices only, a few ESPs and all other devices go to Zigbee with Z2M on HA Supervised. All is working great as it should. No phantom switching or delayed status updates and other annoyances anymore and internet cut-offs doesn’t affect the overall experience with HA.
Unfortunately Shelly products are not available in the country I live in
BTW, Tuya Zigbee devices are not relying on the Tuya Cloud and most of them pair seamlessly with most Zigbee Coordinators. No need for the Tuya Zigbee Gateway. For Z2M compatible devices take a look here.
