Just to clarify for everyone the TuyaAPI library enables you to essentially cut the cloud from these devices without flashing them
You go through a proccess of setting up a free developer account on the Tuya platform, then register your device through the SmartLife app on your phone.tablet.
Once you have done this you get some magic numbers that enable you to intercept the encrypted local traffic and talk directly to the device - you can use your firewall to then block all external communications to the devices so there can be no OTA firmware updates etc from the Internet.
I have ben running my Hydronic Heatpump through this method for the last 3 years using NR to work with all the comms to control states, modes etc and report back all operating parameters.
Essentially the ESP in the HeatPump is just acting as an RS485 bridge
The only downside of all this (last time i checked on Github) is that the original developer of the Tuyapi no longer has any tuya devices and does not do any ongoing development
Thanks for thinking about me
Yes indeed that looks nice. But it looks quite large. The Tuya's on the other hand look quite similar to my old classic din-rail breakers, so that would be easier to replace without having to rewire everything.
Yes I indeed had seen that Tasmota won't work anymore on more recent Tuya devices. And that they don't plan to start supporting those new chips. That was in fact the reason for me to start this discussion....
Yes me too loving the Shelly devices. But their din rail switches are dry contacts, while my current classic din rail breakers are wet contacts. And since I would like to keep the original wiring, unfortunately the Shelly's are not possible for me.
Ha @btsimonh,
When you sended me a PM some time ago, it was remarkable how enthousiastic you were about OpenBeken. But since I had not been reading about Tuya or related stuff, I was not sharing yet your enthousiasm. But it is coming bit by bit
You completely have my attention. But my enthousiasm meanwhile has reduced again a bit, because it looks like no easy solution:
It is not mentioned anywhere on Ali which devices contain which chips. So you really need to order one and tear it apart.
When I e.g. see this teardown project then I already know I won't have enough free time to digg into something like this.
Did I understand correctly that OpenBK supports more chipsets, but you need to open the housing to program the chip? Because when I see that teardown article, I don't see how those devices would survive something like that. But perhaps I have misunderstood the concept. Did not have time yet for in detail reading...
When you say that Tuya is closing holes, that makes it a bit less attempting for me. Suppose I want to add some extra breakers in the future, that won't perhaps won't be possible due to Tuya firmware upgrades. Which means I would be stuck...
That would indeed be nice. But then you won't know what is inside the case.
Yes you can pretty much tell what it is by the function it performs and the age of the device - plus once you have it you can get the mac address and some GoogleFU willl usually let you know what it is
You are right that across generations this will evolve and indeed over time Tuya will try to close the loophole - but i think they are starting to realise the futility of that and are starting to work with the open source community.
Once Matter devices start to hit the shelves in quantity then this will make a lot of this go away and Tuya will have to make a decision to either go like Sonoff and Shelly and open up and make it easier for 3rd parties or get lost with the big boys in the Matter/Thread ecosphere
Yep they can - but if Matter and Thread etc do make the splash that everyone is talking about then the area for them to compete in gets a lot smaller - most people buy the devices that we can hack/firmware flash for interoperability and/or to cut the ties to the cloud - theoretically this should happen out of the box with Matter
