Tuya Zigbee Contact Sensors any good?

“Any good?” is probably too broad a question.

They work well with Tuya made hubs, but that doesn’t help if you want to use them with smartthings.

I didn’t see a model number at your link, and that’s a big issue with tuya devices.

Tuya uses a lot of proprietary code which only works out of the box with its own hubs.

To get them to work with a smartthings hub, you’ll have to use custom code, and that can be tricky because Tuya also uses a non-standard format for its “fingerprints“ (the model and manufacturer information).

So you can try one and see if it works. It probably won’t, which is to say it may not report closed again, it may drop off-line, any of several different issues.

At that point, you have to start researching to see if someone already has a custom edge driver that works with it, and to do that, you have to figure out what its fingerprint is. That information is no longer available through the standard smartthings features, so you’ll have to do some additional work to get something setup which will show you the fingerprint. The following thread discusses the various options for that step.

How to Get the Manufacturer ID and Model (fingerprint) without the IDE?

Then, once you have the fingerprint, you can request that one of the community developers add it to an existing custom sensor edge driver. Or, of course, write your own custom edge driver.

Once a custom edge driver exists that has that fingerprint, then you can download it to your hub and use it with the sensor.

So yes, that’s a lot of work and many steps. Does that still fit the definition of “any good?“ That’s a personal evaluation.

Lots of people are attracted to tuya Zigbee devices because they are very inexpensive and often have very cool features. But they typically don’t work out of the box with smartthings and you may have to do some significant research to get them to work.

Speaking just for myself, I avoid Tuya devices (anything that uses the “smart life“ app, or has the tuya logo) because it’s just more work than it’s worth it to me. But there are quite a few community members who do use them.

It’s possible that in a few months tuya will have released a hub which is a “matter bridge“ in which case integration will be way simpler. You’ll hopefully be able to add Tuya devices to their own hub, then add that hub to your smartthings account, and it should bring many (although not all) of its devices with it. No research needed, no custom code required, and a local and hopefully reliable connection. But that’s not available yet.

So, as always, the first rule of home automation applies: “the model number matters.“ And even moreso for tuya devices. :thinking:

oh, and the fact that they say “zigbee 3.0” doesn’t change any of what I wrote above. The Zigbee 3.0 standard allows manufacturers to use ‘manufacturer proprietary” clusters instead of the standard options and still get certified.

I bought Tuya contact sensors by Aubess that look similar what you have shown about 9 months ago. They work fine with ST using the ZigBee Contact Mc driver.

They problem with Tuya is that they frequently change the fingerprints and/or firmware, so the ones you purchase may not work with ST. Then you will need to find a developer to modify a driver so that they will work with ST.

They work good indoors, but if you try to use them in an unheated area they burn through batteries very quickly.

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