I am surprised to see how overwhelmingly popular Tuya devices are for Home Assistant users. It appears that devices using the official integration are very combersome to setup, they are cloud dependent, and they will often need to be re-setup due to a re-acceptance of the ToS.
Are people actively buying these devices? Are a lot of homes setup with legacy Tuya devices?
I personally have no Tuya devices in my home and after reading the integration page, I would actively avoid them. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/tuya
The integration page shows that Tuya is used by 29.2% of active installations and the number of devices from the graph show a huge gap between Tuya and all other devices. This leads me to think that these devices would be prioritized by the developers. Am I missing something? Are these devices so cheap that they are just worth it for many to deal with the consequences of the cloud and apparent hassle of setup?
I tend to avoid them but sometimes the price point is worth the extra trouble.
A Tuya dev account will allow for easily obtaining local keys, at which point they are cut off from the internet and given to Local Tuya for control.
Most recent successes are a pair of Calex mood lights from a local supermarket that were marked down enough to impulse buy.
I would not use the official integration for anything.
So a tuya dev account can make them local, this is the piece I was missing. Now I want to get one just to try it out.
Yes, with the caveat that you need to be 100% sure they are cut off from outside when you get the keys. Whatever device is handling your connection needs to have the features to be able to do that, but often ISP provided kit will not.
The most recommended way is to isolate them on their own VLAN. I have few enough not to bother, and just give them static DHCP reservations from a block of addresses that are disallowed outside access. This has worked fine for me for over a year.
If they get any opportunity to phone home though, the local key may change abruptly and you’ll have to go through the process again.
Flashing alternative firmware is always the best solution, but it’s the most technical and sometimes not possible without physically ruining the device. Or it just might not have a supported chip.
Local Tuya fills that gap nicely. Just need the keys. A dev account is free and renewable at no cost. You can also use older versions of the Tuya/Smartlife app that expose the info. Some have had success that way with an Android VM like Bluestacks.