Tuya or ZigBee?

Hardware Home Automation
1

Hi,
I basically use z-wave in my setup, apart from the smoke detectors, which are from Homematic, a few sockets from Shelly and a TP-Link lightbulb. I’ve been looking for a solution for the blinds on 3 windows for months, but haven’t found one yet. There are no Z-Wave devices and that’s why I’m faced with the problem of which additional technology to bring into the house and that’s why I’m posting this thread, because I’m undecided.

I have found many Tuya and Zigbee devices.
The Tuya binding is not an official binding and therefore probably not yet fully developed.
Zigbee is mature, but I don’t know how well the mesh network works when you only have 3 devices, so I wanted to ask for your opinion.

Best regards

2

Zigbee

3

I’m not advocating and do not have any, but there fibargroup seems to have zwave shudder/blinds controllers (unless I do not understand your need). Search forum for “blinds control zwave order:latest”

4

Hi Bob,
since there is no current anywhere near those windows and they don’t have “real” blinds I’m stuck with something like this
or this
Best regards

5

The Tuya binding works well, but I don’t think I’d want Tuya blinds. You’d either need them to be plugged into AC or have to recharge them constantly due to the WiFi power demands.

You don’t have to have a big Zigbee network. Mesh only matters if some of your devices are having trouble reaching the controller due to range or obstacles. If that’s the case, add a smart plug to your network to serve as a repeater.

I ordered Z-Wave Bali Blinds earlier this year from Costco, and they work really well. I’ve had them up for about six months and the batteries are still around 70%. They aren’t cheap, but they fit perfectly in my windows and have given me no trouble at all. Others told me that it’s worth spending on custom blinds, rather than messing around with DIY, and I have to agree with them. I don’t regret spending the money at all.

EDIT: Just saw the links you posted while I was drafting that message. Maybe worth trying, but I tend not to expect much from anything sold on AliExpress. I see no reason that they wouldn’t work with the Tuya binding, which just polls the Tuya server to create channels for a thing.

6

Thanks for the reply! Normally I would agree but I have two of this curtains from zemismart up and running and they really work well and the support was great, so I will give it a shot.

Thanks for all answers! :slight_smile:

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I would vote for ZigBee. Tuya local control has some weak points and you depend on their cloud service otherwise.

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Zigbee and a smart plug as mentioned if you have a range concern to your Zigbee controller. lots of options I do have both Zigbee and Zwave devices in my house and both work very well. No CLOUD no additional wireless traffic on your router.

1 Like
9

Thanks for the reply.

What are the weak points of the local Tuya control?

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  • You need to get the “local key”. You need the cloud for that, if you reset the device to factory settings, the key changes and the cloud connection is once more required (for pairing).
  • Battery powered device don’t have good support for local connections, they go into a sleep mode. They only report their state to the cloud.
11

I’m not worried about the three additional WLAN devices, the network should be able to cope with that.
I’m actually more concerned about ZigBee because the RP is in the basement and the windows are on the first floor, so I assume that one socket won’t be enough. More devices also mean more potential sources of error and more costs. I also read that the Zigbee stick must not be plugged directly into the RP because of possible interference, which was actually the reason why I decided against ZigBee at the time.

Since Tuya is not officially supported, I was also worried and considered ZigBee again. I’m really undecided, but I think Tuya is cheap to test.

12

As long as the control is local this doesn’t bother me.

Okay, now I will not buy a tuya device with battery for sure. But what would interest me now: Does a device with a solar panel work like a device with batteries or is it considered a device with power supply?
Am I right in assuming that only the manufacturer can answer this?

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I have 3 tuya blind motors with a solar panel, and they are considered as a battery powered device. So they will not work as a zigbee repeater.

14

Thanks for the reply. Are the three blind motors connected via ZigBee- or via Tuya-Binding?
J-N-K was talking about problems with the Tuya-binding

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I use them with zigbee2mqtt. Works like a charm.

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16

I have read zigbee2mqtt many times but since I don’t use zigBee I don’t understand what the advantage is over just using the zigbee-binding. :confused:

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17

I’ve been using zigbee2mqtt and a bunch of ZigBee sensors from Xiaomi, and IKEA light bulbs, plugs, repeaters.

When it works, it works well. But sometimes things get disconnected and it’s hard /a hassle to get them reconnected.

Right now wifi devices work more reliably for me. This includes esphome and tuya via local control using tuyamqtt docker.

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I have devices that are not on the supported list of the zigbee binding. Zigbee2mqtt support a lot more.

1 Like
19

Okay, that makes sense.

Seems like another argument against ZigBee to me.

Do you use tuyamqtt because esphome already needs an mqtt broker or or is it like Olaf that not all devices are supported by the binding?

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Olaf was referring to zigbee2mqtt.

Tuya local control is over wifi. The option is either tuya-mqtt or smarthome/J tuya binding. I find tuya-mqtt easier and more reliable to work with, but it’s because I have a system to templatise Mqtt devices. Without it, using manual Mqtt config can be tedious, and it would be easier to use a binding. This applies to zigbee2mqtt too.