Tuya devices to Openhab via MQTT - a working solution (without flashing)!

Flip · October 19, 2020, 5:18pm

Dear OH-community,

I found several postings about adding tuya devices to OH. Thanks to @tsightler finally there is a working solution now.

Tom rewrote his whole code with some modifications on the underlaying TuyAPI. One of the highlights here is the easy naming (device names instead id’s) and the OH-friendly path (for example: if you have a power strip with multiple outlets, you can access the mqtt-topic easily by tuya/powerstrip/dps/2/state).

Please note that the underlaying TuyAPI doesn’t support protocol version 3.2 yet. On the other hand, I have a lot of tuya devices here and none are using the protocol version 3.2. Everytime I ran into a problem with a device not working, I just switched the pv from 3.1 to 3.3 or vice versa).

So here I want so share a short How-To:

Follow the instructions here and add all your devices within the (tuya-/smartlife)-app.
See section: Listing Tuya devices from the Tuya Smart or Smart Life apps (highly recommended)

github.com

codetheweb/tuyapi/blob/master/docs/SETUP.md

**YMMV**: Tuya likes to change their website frequently and the below instructions may be slightly out of date. If something looks wrong, please open a new issue.

**Note**: both methods below require that your device works with the official Tuya Smart app. If your device only works with one specific app, it almost certainly won't work with TuyAPI.

All methods below require you to install the CLI tool before proceeding.

Install it by running `npm i @tuyapi/cli -g`. If it returns an error, you may need to prefix the command with `sudo`. (Tip: using `sudo` to install global packages is not considered best practice. See [this NPM article](https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/fixing-npm-permissions) for some help.)

## Listing Tuya devices from the **Tuya Smart** or **Smart Life** apps

This method is fast and easy. If you're having trouble manually linking your device with the below method, we recommend you try this. All devices that you want to use **must** be registered in either the Tuya Smart app or the Smart Life app.

1. Follow steps 1 through 3 from the "Linking a Tuya device with Smart Link" method below.
2. Go to Cloud -> Development and click the project you created earlier. Then click the "Devices" tab. Click the "Link Tuya App account" tab, and select the right data center in the upper right dropdown (eg Western America).
3. Click "Add App Account" and scan the QR code from your smart phone/tablet app by going to the 'Me' tab in the app, and tapping a QR code / Scan button in the upper right. Your account will now be linked.
4. On the command line, run `tuya-cli wizard`. It will prompt you for required information, and will then list out all your device names, IDs, and keys for use with TuyAPI. Copy and save this information to a safe place for later reference.

## Linking a Tuya device with Smart Link

This method requires you to create a developer account on [iot.tuya.com](https://iot.tuya.com). It doesn't matter if the device(s) are currently registered in the Tuya Smart app or Smart Life app or not.

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In order to get tuya-mqtt running, you will need a running mqtt server. A step-by-step guide can be found here (section: Update for MQTT-Binding 2.4):

Installation of tuya-mqtt (I installed it in the OH-scripts-directory):

cd /etc/openhab2/scripts
git clone GitHub - TheAgentK/tuya-mqtt: Nodejs-Script to combine tuyaapi and openhab via mqtt
cd tuya-mqtt
npm install

cp config.json.sample config.json

Edit config.json and adjust to your environment - for example:

{
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": 1883,
    "topic": "tuya/",
    "mqtt_user": "",
    "mqtt_pass": "",
    "qos": 2
}

Now it’s time to configure the devices. You can use “tuya-cli wizard” to get a basic devices.conf. As this can be complex (especially if you run your devices in different VLANs) please read this first:

github.com

TheAgentK/tuya-mqtt/blob/master/README.md

# tuya-mqtt

# !!!! Important Note !!!!
This project is currently in maintainance mode.  No further enhancements to this project are planned and will not be planned for the future unless someone out there is interested in becoming the new maintainer.  Please do not open issues to request new features, new device support, etc, as they will likely be closed with no comment.  I will try to support existing functionality, but even this will likely be on a very limited basis.  If you are interested in maintaining this project, please post [here](https://github.com/rospogrigio/localtuya/issues/194).

I have decided to step away from this project as I've made the personal decision to rid myself of any Tuya Wifi based devices (I'm down to only 4 at this point, and they are all easy to replace or at least flash with Tasmota).  This decision was made due to the fact that Tuya continues to make it more and more difficult to control their devices locally.  While I don't blame them for this, these devices were only interesting to me because of this local control and thus I can no longer meet my personal goals with Tuya devices (at least the Wifi ones) so I will no longer be purchasing/using them going forward.

# About
This project is a bridge that allows locally controlling IOT devices manufactured by Tuya Inc., and sold under many different brands, via simple MQTT topics.  It effectively translate the Tuya protocol to easy to use topics.

Using this script requires obtaining the device ID and local keys for each of your devices after they are configured via the Tuya/Smart Life or other Tuya compatible app (there are many).  With this information it is possible to communicate locally with Tuya devices using Tuya protocol version 3.1 and 3.3 without using the Tuya Cloud service, however, getting the keys requires signing up for a Tuya IOT developer account or using one of several other alternative methods (such as dumping the memory of a Tuya based app running on Android).

To acquire keys for your device please see the instructions at the TuyAPI project (on which this script is based) available at the [TuyAPI GitHub site](https://github.com/codetheweb/tuyapi/blob/master/docs/SETUP.md).

**Acquiring device keys is outside the scope of this project!** Issues opened regarding acquiring keys will likely be closed without comment. Please verify that your device can be queried and controlled via tuya-cli before opening any issue.  If your device can't be controlled by tuya-cli then it cannot be used with this project.

**!!!!!!!!!! Important information regarding the 3.0 release !!!!!!!!!!**\
The 3.0.0 release (Oct 17th, 2020) is a major refactor of the tuya-mqtt project and, as such, is a breaking release for all users of previous versions.  Almost everything about the project is different, including configuration method, topic names, etc.  Upgrading users should carefully read the instructions below and assume they are starting over from scratch.

## Installation

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github.com

TheAgentK/tuya-mqtt/blob/master/docs/DEVICES.md

# tuya-mqtt - Devices
The most powerful feature in tuya-mqtt is the ability to configure devices to use friendly topics.  For some devices there exist pre-defined device templates which makes using those devices quite easy, simply add the type information to the devices.conf file and tuya-mqtt automatically creates friendly topics for that device.

Friendly topics make it easy to communicate with the device in a standard way and thus integrating into various Home Automation platforms.  The topic style generally follows that used by the Home Assistant MQTT integration components and the pre-defined devices automatically send Home Assistant style MQTT discovery messages during startup to make integration with Home Assistant, or other platforms which understand Home Assistant MQTT discovery, even easier.

If the device does not have a pre-defined device template, it's possible to create a template using the [generic device template](#generic-device-templates) feature.

## Pre-defined Device Templates
Pre-defined device templates (except for the Generic Device) will always expose friendly topics for the given device in a consistent manner.  Currently the following pre-defined device templates are available:

| Device Type | Descrition |
| --- | --- |
| SimpleSwitch | Supports simple on/off devices |
| SimpleDimmer | Supports simple devices with on/on and brightness |
| RGBTWLight | Supports color/white lights with optional color temerature support |
| GenericDevice | Allows defining a custom template for any device |

To use a device template, simply add the "type" option to the devices.conf similar to the following example:
```
[

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For example, my devices.conf looks like:

[
  {
    name: 'TV Living',
    id: '363062476001********',
    key: '0354913f********',
    ip: '192.168.103.19',
    version: '3.1',
    type: 'SimpleSwitch'
  },
  {
    name: 'Monitor',
    id: 'bf2358890b1bfd********',
    key: '26db678b********',
    ip: '192.168.103.16',
    version: '3.3',
    type: 'SimpleSwitch'
  },
  {
    name: 'LightBulb',
    id: '56100002c44f********',
    key: '848c69c9********',
    ip: '192.168.103.23',
    version: '3.3',
    type: 'RGBTWLight'
  }
]

You should be able to start tuya-mqtt now:

node tuya-mqtt.js
Next you have to define your MQTT-channels - I simply did that via PaperUI. Use a “Generic MQTT Thing” (for example “MQTT Tuya”) and add your channels here according to your devices.conf:

It’s time to configure your items - here an example ( /etc/openhab2/items/tuya.items ):

// Adding a switch which is linked to a mqtt-topic
Switch Office_Monitor “Monitor” {channel=“mqtt:topic:mqtt_tuya:Office_Monitor”}
With the items generated in step 5 you can proceed as usual (add the items to sitemaps, use it in rules, etc.)

To run tuya-mqtt as a systemd-service, you can create a file:

 sudo vi /lib/systemd/system/tuya-mqtt.service

and add the folling lines:

 [Unit]
 Description=tuya-mqtt
 After=mosquitto.service

 [Service]
 ExecStart=/usr/bin/node /etc/openhab2/scripts/tuya-mqtt/tuya-mqtt.js
 Restart=always
 User=openhabian
 Group=openhabian
 Environment=PATH=/usr/bin/
 Environment=NODE_ENV=production
 WorkingDirectory=/etc/openhab2/scripts/tuya-mqtt/

 [Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

After saving the file, you have to run:

 sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Now you can start the service:

 sudo systemctl start tuya-mqtt.service

Check if the service is runnning properly:

 sudo systemctl status tuya-mqtt.service

If you see any error, please run

 journalctl -u tuya-mqtt.service -n 100

and post the output here.

The last step is to make the service starting automatically on reboot. This is done by:

 sudo systemctl enable tuya-mqtt.service

I am using tuya-mqtt now for 2 weeks in my production environment and it’s absolutely stable!

If you have any further questions/proplems/ideas, please feel free to reply here…

What else I can say… Thank you @tsightler !

Tukks · October 19, 2020, 5:32pm

Great tutorial!
I flashed mine with tasmota to have matt binding.
Good to know we can control directly tuya device without soldering and flashing

Flip · October 19, 2020, 5:36pm

I had the problem that many of my devices are not flashable. But as you are now able to create a free account on iot.tuya.com, it’s pretty easy to get your neccessary device_id’s and keys. Still some effort but you will be able to get almost every tuya-device in without need to flash it first.

Especially the handling of the light bulbs is fantastic now with tuya-mqtt 3.0 - it even respects the white mode of some newer bulbs…

pedrolima · October 20, 2020, 6:13pm

Is it just me, with some wrong configs, or is node.js really hungry for resources and therefore a basic RPi 3B+ isn’t enought for the job?

I mean, I’ve invested literally days on this subject and I could make it work! But in order to make it work I had to first run “node tuya-mqtt.js” and let terminal open with that, or I had to use “forever start tuya-mqtt.js”.

In either cases my CPU was up to 30/45% all the time and that caused OH to become very slow responding commands (sometimes not even responding at all).

With this script not running, my system is just very, very fast! I mean, I’ve been optimizing this for a long time now and although I have around 50/60 equipments (some 10 via Z-Wave and others via MQTT), the system simply works like a charm!

This Tuya integration was like a new challenge and I did made it… to a certain point I mean! I’ve just unninstalled nodejs and tuya-mqtt because I can’t just have this slow and unstable system.

As far as I could read on my research, Java is (very) hungry for memory due to the way this language operates. So, I mean, does JS also work that way? Is NodeJS just too much to handle for this small computing capacity?

I don’t know, I though I could just share my experience. This was just to control a single blind, so I don’t mind having to tell Alexa commands or to operate it with the remote it has, it’s just that I like to have everything integrated into OH.

Flip · October 21, 2020, 6:05am

@pedrolima I am running my test-environment on a Raspberry 4 and the memory/cpu usage was extremely low (couldn’t even find it on the first page of the top-output). I also created a Grafana-graph which showed me the resource usage during all my tests. In the beginning I had such a cpu-usage problem but then I updated node and after it worked fine. Can you please share your node and java version?

And yes, you are right, my bad - I forgot to add a section “How to run as a systemd service” in my how-to - sorry for that! I will write it in the next couple of minutes…

*** Update: Added step 7 to the how-to ***

pedrolima · October 21, 2020, 10:06pm

I’ve unnistalled node and will not install this again. But I really appreciate your feedback and your work.

I believe this might have been something I did wrong, but I just don’t have the time to play with this.

Having my businesses to run leaves me with not much time to spare, but it’s an awesome hobby!

tsightler · October 29, 2020, 1:19am

Node should, in general, be very light on memory and tuya-mqtt should not need much memory overall, although I guess everything is relative. In my environment, tuya-mqtt running on NodeJS v12.18.4 uses about 65-70MB of memory, which I think is pretty light. If you’re seeing high memory/CPU usage from tuya-mqtt, that would be unexpected for sure as I’ve worked pretty hard to make sure there are no memory leaks or other issues. CPU wise, usage for tuya-mqtt should be next to nothing, it’s extremely lightweight in this regard.

The only thing I could think of is if you device is perhaps already right at the edge of available memory, so that running a process that needs another 75MB of RAM is just too much and pushes it into swap, making everything run slower.

czupyt · November 10, 2020, 11:16am

Hello,

I was looking but cannot find anywhere - does it work with Tuya Moes Zigbee Thermostat for Radiator?

Thanks for answer!

Flip · November 10, 2020, 11:37am

Is your device connected to a Tuya Zigbee gateway? If so, it might not work that way… I handle all my Zigbee devices via a Conbee USB-stick…

czupyt · November 10, 2020, 12:34pm

I havent bought it yet Just wondering whether it will be working when connected with Zigbee Tuya gate. If not, than I will stick with zigbee2mqtt

epicurean · November 23, 2020, 10:41am

I get warnings and errors with the command ‘sudo npm i @tuyapi/cli -g’ saying node must be > 10 and mine is 8.10
What should I do?

I updated to the latest with sudo npm i -g npm@latest.
Still get a lot of warnings ‘notsup’

Flip · November 23, 2020, 10:55am

Can you please check your node version:

node -v

epicurean · November 23, 2020, 10:57am

its 8.10

Flip · November 23, 2020, 11:01am

So your node version hasn’t been updated. Depending on your operating system you could try this:

epicurean · November 26, 2020, 8:16am

Finally installed into the ubuntu VM without errors.
My OH is a docker container inside the ubuntu VM. Will this installation work, or do I also need to make another kind of installation inside the container?

Eli.Roz · November 28, 2020, 5:36pm

Works perfectly, after making sure that I didn’t missed any steps.

Thanks!

morrpheus · December 5, 2020, 12:33am

Hi there. I´ve got a problem. I can´t run node because no ´devices.conf´will be created.
If I try to create it manually, an error occours ´devices file not found´.
Any solution?

Flip · December 16, 2020, 6:19am

Sorry for the late reply - pretty busy at the moment… Did you run „tuya-cli wizard“ (as described in step 3) before you started tuya-mqtt?

morrpheus · December 16, 2020, 10:55pm

I´ve tried it a several times in different variations. Still no ´devices.conf´.
Just to clarify: the devices.conf should be in the ´tuya-mqtt´-directory?

Flip · December 21, 2020, 3:06pm

Yes, the devices.conf should be in the same path of tuya-mqtt.js…

Ok, let’s get it sorted:
Can you please navigate to your directory where you installed tuya-mqtt (in my example: /etc/openhab2/scripts/tuya-mqtt) and from there please run the following commands:

cd node_modules/.bin
./tuya-cli wizard

This script should ask for your api-credentials and a virtual ID - all those values you should have from Step 1 in the tutorial… Please check if the script runs through and returns your tuya-items.