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Tuya is one of the biggest players in the smart home game, last year, they held a massively successful IoT event called AIE.

It is a bit like MWC or IFA, but for smart home devices and it will showcase all the latest technology currently available and upcoming for the Tuya platform. Tuya provides solutions that contain PaaS platform, SaaS capabilities, as well as device and software development. Businesses are then able to connect to each other and reach deals while consumers can learn more about the Tuya platform and its products.

The event will be held between the 15th of March and 16th of April 2021, and you can register for access to it free of charge here.

What to expect from TIE 2021

A large part of the Tuya expo is B2B, allowing businesses to connect with each other and establish relationships. In particular, it offers retailers the chance to apply for quote for many of the Tuya compatible products. These all seem to be white label products, so allow businesses to launch their own smart home products with no manufacture or development costs.

The Tuya Expo is then used to showcase the latest and greatest hardware that is currently available and due to be launched this year.

What is Tuya?

Tuya provides both hardware and software with IoT capabilities. Its IoT Cloud Platform is what most consumers will be aware of. The Tuya Smart life app supports a wide range of devices from different manufacturers, allowing Tuya to offer a wider range of IoT products within their platform than other competing options.

This allows consumers to buy affordable smart home electronics from different brands and have them all work within one app, rather than dozens of apps or having to commit to one specific hardware supplier.

The Tuya platform is used on a vast range of smart home products, above and beyond what any individual brand can offer.

When many small companies develop smart hardware and produce their own app, the app is often poorly designed and glitchy. I am sure we have all experienced it, and it doesn’t take long to spot on the Play Store.  Unless it is a massively popular brand, the app will have a small number of reviews and often low review ratings.

The Tuya Smart Life app is well designed and intuitive to use, I have found it to be just as good as other big brand smart home products such as Philips Hue, TP-Link Kasa, and Eufy.

This is the brilliance of the Tuya platform; they allow small manufactures access to a well-designed app and provide a way for products to integrate with each other. Most of the development work is already done for them.

SaaS & commercial applications

Tuya do a lot more than develop a consumer-facing app; they also provide SaaS solutions. One example is the Tuya Apartment SaaS Platform which provides a rich and open API interface for connecting multiple management systems to meet the needs of renters and tenants.

Communication Protocals – Zigbee

Most of the products I have that use Tuya are Wi-Fi controlled; however, as of June 2020, Tuya joined the Zigbee Alliance Board of Directors. Zigbee is the low-power low data rate wireless network that is used with proper products such as Samsung SmartThings. With Zigbee products, you would then need to pair them with a gateway, but once this is don’t they should all work within the Tuya platform.

Tuya compatible products

With Tuya being an IoT Cloud Platform that is open to all smart home/IoT developers, the range of products available to consumers far exceeds any other smart home system I am aware of.

On the Tuya Expo product pages, you will find hundreds of products that range from your typical smart home devices such as lighting, plugs and sensors.

They then have small and large appliances such as robotic vacuums (I reviewed the MooSoo vacuum cleaner), washing machines, fridges and aid conditioners.

Af course, they also cover all aspects of security too, with indoor & outdoor cameras such as floodlight cameras, smart locks and video doorbells.

They even have Tuya compatible electric bikes and scooters!

Integrations

As you would expect from a smart home system, Tuya supports many integrations. In fact, under the third party voice services section, there are more options than any other system I am aware of.

The big ones include Alexa, Google Assistant and SmartThings. IFTTT support was temporarily dropped last year but is showing again now. Then you also have XIAODU, Tencent and DingDong.

Overall

The size and scope of the Tuya IoT Cloud Platform is incredible, with the number of available products dwarfing competing brand-specific platforms (unless you count Google/Alexa).

The Tuya AIE expo will be a fantastic way to learn more about what’s available and what to expect for 2021.

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