All about TUYA » Learn more about the Smart iOT Platform

If you are interested in Smart Home electronics, you may have come across the name TUYA. In this blog, I would like to make you a little more knowledgeable about TUYA and how wireless devices in the smart home work and how they communicate with each other.

What is TUYA? TUYA is the platform that smart Home devices use to "talk" together. With TUYA, you can control different types of wireless devices (Bluetooth, ZigBee, Wi-Fi) from different manufacturers from the same app.

You can because TUYA is the basic platform that most manufacturers of wireless "smart" electronics use for their devices.

First a little about the smart home

Smart Home is the name for smart electronics that can be controlled wirelessly and in series. 

Imagine, for example, that the lights in the whole house come on when you wake up and that the robot vacuum cleaner has vacuumed while you were at work. 

In the smart home, you can control the electronics from an app on your smartphone or tablet.

Security is top notch and sensors send you a warning if there are uninvited guests. The smoke and vandal alarm detects fire or flooding. 

Your health can be monitored so you can track your health over time.

Smart Home has endless options for connecting and controlling electronics, and new options are being added all the time.

But doesn't that require a lot of new equipment?

It actually doesn't take much to get started. 

The good thing about Smart Home electronics is that you can start by buying a light bulb and gradually add more and more intelligent devices.

Over time, you can change more and more bulbs, all of which can be controlled from the same app. 

The idea is to make the home intelligent, so that, for example, it turns on the lights itself when darkness falls or pulls in the awning when the sun has set.

Control the smart house with your voice

Something you will see more and more of in the near future is electronics that you can control with your voice.

The companies that are furthest ahead with assistants for voice control are Google with Google Assistant / Google Home, Amazon with Amazon Alexa and Apple with Siri / Apple HomeKit.

You may have already tried voice control on your phone. In the next step, the assistants have moved into the speakers, which you can ask to play a music track or turn off the lights.

Think that everything you eventually get as smart electronics in the home, which can be controlled from an app, will be able to be controlled by the assistant.

Endless possibilities in the smart home

Just think of all the types of Smart Home devices that you want to be able to control from your app:

• Smart Home Bulbs
• Smart Home Switches
• Smart Home Motion Sensor
• Smart Home Video Doorbell
• Smart Home Video Surveillance< /li>
• Smart Home security (camera, sensor, smoke alarm, water alarm)
• Smart Home plugs with energy meter
• Smart Home Lamps
• Smart Home electricity -radiator
• Smart Home fan
• Smart Home fan heater
• Smart Home air conditioning
• Smart Home bath scale
• Smart Home vacuum cleaner

Learn more about wireless connectivity

In the smart home, you can control all the electronics from an app on your smartphone or tablet. But how do the wireless devices talk to each other?

You may have come across the term IoT or Internet of Things. The term covers technology that connects devices and functions to the Internet so that they can continuously send you data. It could be, for example, the burglar alarm that is controlled from your mobile phone. IoT in the home is called Smart Home.

This can be via the mobile network, a regular internet connection, Wi-Fi or closed networks.

But Wi-Fi is Wi-Fi or what?

This is actually the main question when I talk about TUYA.

Wi-Fi is a basic wireless communication standard. But there are also other standards for wireless communication such as ZigBee and Bluetooth.

A device that has Bluetooth as a wireless communication protocol cannot automatically talk to a device that has ZigBee as a wireless communication protocol.

For example, let's say you bought a Philips Hue light bulb and a Nedis SmartLife light bulb. Basically, Hue uses the ZigBee protocol, while SmartLife is a Wi-Fi device.

Therefore, they cannot necessarily be managed collectively.

Philips Hue has their own app that they want people to use with their Hue products, and Nedis has a SmartLife app that they want people to use with the SmartLife devices.

This is where TUYA comes into the picture. TUYA is the IoT platform on which many manufacturers have built their own app.

It may therefore be a good idea to keep an eye on whether the Smart Home products you buy support TUYA.

With the TUYA Smart app, you can control the vast majority of Smart Home devices together from a single app.

A little about apps for control

Most manufacturers of Smart Home electronics have their own app, which is available for both iOS and Android operating systems.

The problem with producer apps is that they are dedicated apps. That is that they are designed to control devices in the same series.

The Nedis SmartLife app can, for example, control light bulbs, cameras and power from Nedis SmartLife devices. With the Deltaco Smart Home app you can control Deltaco Smart Home devices and so on.

But as you develop your Smart Home, you cannot avoid getting products from different manufacturers.

The smart thing about TUYA is that it is the basic platform for the manufacturer-specific apps.

If you use the TUYA Smart app, you can add hundreds of different products from different manufacturers, you can add Bluetooth devices, ZigBee devices and Wi-Fi devices and control them all together from one app.

If you have bought Philips Hue bulbs that are co-controlled via a Hue bridge, you may be thinking that you had better keep using Hue. In doing so, you might miss out on exciting new products from eg Deltaco Smart Home or Denver Smart Home.

You are not bound to only use devices from the same manufacturer. If you have Philips Hue, you can easily connect it to new devices with Wi-Fi via the TUYA app.

You are not dependent on Bridge or gateway, but at the same time you can easily add devices that are.

With TUYA Smart, you can in principle connect all Smart Home equipment together.

save money

TUYA can therefore go on to become the cornerstone of the smart home. When you can control all your smart devices together from one place, you also get the opportunity to monitor energy consumption. You can create schedules for lights so that you only use the amount of energy that is absolutely necessary.

So it is technology that helps to make the home more energy-efficient and therefore technology that can save you money and protect the environment.

You don't have to lie in bed and think about whether you turned off the light in the shed or turned off the computer. The smart home does it for you.

You can, for example, make plans to turn off the lights in a room after a while when there has been no movement in the room. Or you can use a "turn off everything" function when you leave the house or go to bed.

5 Advantages of TUYA Smart