Recently, I have been very interested in the question of whether it is still possible to build a fully smart home on the basis of some ecosystem, for example Tuya, that is, not to resort to some additional servers, some additional devices, sticks, but just take, say, the Tuya gateway, buy some devices that support the Tuya ecosystem, and it's easy to build a normal smart home system based on this, but at the same time, of course, I would like it not just to have remote control of these devices or monitoring through an application, and full-fledged automation so that scenarios can be developed, and so that these scenarios work correctly, reliably, without any failures.

In principle, Tuya is more the creator of the ecosystem, they have a special website, a server on which all this is processed, anyone can make their devices there and there is basically a small certification, then maybe in principle they will work in this ecosystem, that is, almost all applications will be seen, so a lot of manufacturers, they start to develop your own devices specifically for this system, to adapt them, and this of course gives a wide variety of different devices from different manufacturers, but this also has its drawback, since certification is not very strict, it is not mandatory, manufacturers make devices that are actually not very similar and not very compatible with each other, for example, they produce different gateways, it is also unclear which one is better which is worse, there are universal gateways that support different protocols and Zigbee and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and in in principle, there are those that work only, for example, Zigbee, support only Zigbee, and there are still different versions, but now of course these are mostly versions of 3 devices, there are also those that connect via Ethernet, and which connect via Wi-Fi, mainly via Wi-Fi, of course, it is at a frequency of 2.4 GHz, which is not very convenient because, firstly, this range is very clogged, indoors, in an apartment, in houses, and of course sometimes they will not work very well, they need to be placed somewhere so that they can see the router better, and they can It's certainly more interesting to work normally, which connects via Ethernet, this is already a stable wired connection to the router, even if, in principle, you also place it near the router, it will still be much easier to do than connect via Wi-Fi and will work more reliably and faster.

The Zigbee protocol itself also works at a frequency in the region of 2.4 Gigahertz, that is, in fact, they interfere with each other, if the Zigbee gateway is located near the Wi-Fi router, then of course large leads sometimes go very badly and you need to place this gateway very carefully, carefully, the plus of course is the Zigbee format, then you can build a mesh-network, that is, it will be every device that is powered by a network, it will also act as a Zigbee network router and, accordingly, devices, different sensors that are far from the gateway, can also transmit information through these devices, thus, the Zigbee network becomes more reliable, more devices are connected to each other and, in principle, the signal is stronger, and it is possible to make much better coverage and range of this network and this interaction.

But there is a big disadvantage, that if the coordinator, that is, the main gateway fails for some reason, for example, the gateway is turned off, then no other methods of interaction will work, so there is still the possibility to use Wi-Fi devices that connect directly to the router and thus you can, for example, some with smart Wi-Fi sockets, you can control the operation of routers or gateways or other devices that work from Zigbee, and vice versa, Wi-Fi can also be controlled by a gateway that works on Zigbee, for example, an outlet on Zigbee can turn off the router and reboot it and, accordingly, thus restore the operation of the Wi-Fi network.

I have quite a lot of devices that support the Tuya ecosystem and these are different Chinese manufacturers and, in principle, the design of many devices is very similar, but of course, due to the fact that these are different manufacturers, they are either trying to make it cheaper somehow, or they think they can do better, respectively, and the operation of these devices will be very different, then there are visually they look the same, that let's say a Wi-Fi switch for example, and that switches running on Zigbee from different manufacturers, but for example, there are some LEDs, they can work firstly in different modes and be of different colors, that is, for example, I bought several switches and on one, for example, there are green LEDs. on other switches they are blue, it is not always convenient and of course the design looks very strange, well, their internal work is also arranged differently, but if you use a proprietary gateway, in principle they look about the same there, some are recognized as push-button switches, and some as touch switches, that is, it depends on of which manufacturer chose the type of device in the ecosystem, and accordingly if he did not change it, but made a touch software that supports a touch switch, did the work and copied this firmware to switches with buttons, in fact, of course, it will look different in the ecosystem, but in the ecosystem itself, of course, you will need to re-certify in different ways if you change the type of device, so apparently in order to save some kind of license, do not pay extra, such combinations are strange.

Sockets are smart, too, in principle they are all similar, a lot of the same, and therefore it becomes difficult to buy which one of them, because there are cheap ones and more expensive ones, but it is not clear how much They work the same way or in different ways how much their reliability is different or the same, that is, of course I have a lot of sockets used, there are Wi-Fi sockets and Zigbee sockets, well, Zigbee they also act as a Zigbee network router, Wi-Fi they understand that they just connect directly to the Wi-Fi router, and no longer act additionally with some routers and do not support the improvement of the Wi-Fi network.

Wi-Fi sockets mostly work and of course connect directly to the cloud, and in principle no gateway is even needed for their operation, that is, you can just buy a Wi-Fi outlet plug it into the network there, connect it to the application, say Tuya, in principle you can even connect it to a system such as a Yandex smart home that is, to add to the Yandex application and already control the voice from some speaker, in principle it is convenient, that is, in fact, Yandex supports such sockets very well, you can even connect this outlet directly in Yandex, that is, you don't even need any gateways or any additional applications, because Yandex just fully supports the operation of Tuya devices too, it is working over Wi-Fi, so if simple devices, such as sockets, light bulbs, then the Yandex application sees them as native and, in principle, this is actually a complete analog, those sockets and light bulbs that Yandex itself sells.

But there are also quite a lot of different bulbs, there are these bulbs in different formats, in principle they are integrated and, let's say, they are sent to the same Yandex, those that are Wi-Fi, Zigbee, of course, do not integrate with Yandex directly, that is, through the application, through the Tuya cloud they can be connected.

There is also such a problem that if it is, say, to buy an outlet and a light bulb from Yandex or even maybe from Sberbank, they also all work in the Tuya ecosystem, but they have a unique identifier of this manufacturer and there were cases when they were simply blocked and they did not work in the ecosystem itself, they stopped being supported, this of course, they somehow bypassed it, but in fact such a situation is not very pleasant, from the point of view of the consumer, the user, and of course, to hope that any purchased device will work for a long time, it is not very easy to believe it after such cases, but this is more about the Wi-Fi version, because they cling directly to the cloud, the Zigbee version connects first to the gateway and some scenarios can be worked out locally, but most of Tuya of course works through the cloud, that is, for example, if you need to connect via the phone and give a command or interaction between Wi-Fi and With a Zigbee device, then of course you can't do without the cloud, this sometimes affects the speed of operation and is not very convenient in principle, that is, the connection always goes through the cloud and of course sometimes it can stop working altogether.

But there are a lot of different devices in the ecosystem, there are almost all sensors, temperature sensors, humidity sensors, and motion sensors, but they are certainly not as cute as Xiaomi's, but in principle they all work too, for various reasons, other types of batteries are used there, so the sensor looks bigger, there are opening sensors they are also quite large, but in principle they work fine, these sensors of course all work according to the Zigbee protocol, a gateway is needed for their operation, there are also presence sensors, they also come with Zigbee and Wi-Fi, in fact, of course they are powered by the network and they can also be used in different scenarios, plus there are a lot of different relays that work in the Tuya ecosystem, these can be relays with one contact and can be with several contacts, that is, there is also a very wide variety, also Zigbee and Wi-Fi, there are relays with dry contacts, due to the fact that many manufacturers do, in principle, you can find many different options on the Internet, in stores, different devices, there are also different electricity meters, that is, non-invasive and invasive, which also allows you to measure energy consumption in a house or apartment, and there are even three-phase meters, in principle, they will also be in demand even in a large house.

Automation in a smart home should be useful and create additional comfort, but sometimes everything goes wrong… The reasons for this, and how to configure everything, see on my channel.