Tuya: Smart Life, Smart Living

As a rule, we are anti-technology. Things seemed less stressful before technology became popular. Some things may be improved and others not so good. However, we love this! It has given us no problems. The sound and picture is clear as the phone. It detects motion and sound farther than expected. It gives the temperature, humidity and wind speed and the metric pressure through your location. It maintains a date and time window and can replay with ease. The 64G SD card, not included, plays constantly and will overwrite when the entire card is filled. It takes a screenshot and has a beep on your phone for alarm whenever a motion is detected. The notification and screenshot can be viewed in messages. Very easy to use without carrying a direction booklet with you. Pairing didn’t come easy. The booklet wasn’t clear. Download the app. Within the app is a faqs section. Directions are clear there. The unit is 4” in length plus a 4 screw swivel mounted on the back that can be unscrewed. The wrapped cord with USB port in plug is 31/2”. I had a problem finding something and went to messages and submitted a request for help. Within hours the message was answered clearly. Great support. At night, if a yard light is turned on, it is vivid black and white-easy to detect something unfamiliar. We couldn’t be more pleased.

Updating my review to 3 stars. I had to delete the app and authenticate via Google Home’s browser connection to solve my issue below (worked the second time). Still not a huge fan of the app and features it has to offer. My main issue is that I want to be able to set a scene to change a Daybetter smart bulb from one color to a different color. However, changing the mode of the bulb with a scene seems to be all I can get it to do (e.g., switching from white light to whatever color it is currently set to in Color mode). There is a Color Temperature setting that it shows in the scene setup, but unless I’m not understanding what that’s supposed to do, I think there is a bug that causes this to change the mode from color to white, and it functions the same as white light brightness as a result. Hoping they fix this with a software update, will change to 5 stars if so… I can’t get this app to link to Google Assistant. When I try to connect via the Google Home app, I’m taken to the Tuya Smart app where I’m asked to Agree and link to give the app device control permission. When I click Agree and link, I am redirected to a page that indicates “404. That’s an error. The requested URL was not found on this server. That’s all we know”. This is a bug that will make a purchase I made useless until it’s fixed or I’m provided a solution.

I have become a fan of Wi-Fi controlled lights and household devices that I could activate from my iPhone app when I am away. Lights, music, etc. It helps me feel more secure when I am not home. The consistent problem has been the inconsistent ease of installation and performance of the available plug-in devices. Also, the expense can get out of hand when you need it to be several of them. With one major brand, it took nearly an hour and additional time on the phone with the helpdesk to get a single Wi-Fi hub let plug up and running. It took me a total of five minutes to successfully install three of these-two for lights and one for a radio. Please plug seem to have worked out all the bugs found in earlier and clumsy or attempts. Additionally, they are smaller than any of the others I have found-taking up just a tad more room then hey single plug and, most important Lee, not covering the second outlet on the wall plate. Suffice it to say that I love these! They do the drug easily and reliably from anywhere you have access to Wi-Fi. Great product.