{"id":1112,"date":"2020-10-08T19:48:45","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T23:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lufamily.ca\/kang\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2020-10-18T10:58:58","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T14:58:58","slug":"gosund-tuya-smart-outlet-with-homekit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lufamily.ca\/kang\/2020\/10\/08\/gosund-tuya-smart-outlet-with-homekit\/","title":{"rendered":"Gosund (Tuya) Smart Outlet with HomeKit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently I received an Amazon email, and I found the above Gosund Smart Socket promotion<\/a>. Four smart plugs for $33 CAD. Unfortunately, it was not HomeKit compatible. I did not want to have any of my smart IoT devices connected to Amazon or Google so no thank you Alexa and Google Home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few years ago, I built my own smart garage door opener and hooked it up to the Homebridge server that is running on my NAS media server. The Homebridge server allows non-certified IoT devices to be connected to HomeKit. My garage door opener being one of them. I did a cursory search on Google and found that it should be possible to connect the Gosund outlets to HomeKit using Homebridge, so I took the plunge and made the purchase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plugs came and I downloaded the Gosund app and setup one of the outlet. It worked like a charm through the Gosund app. As I was setting up this single outlet with Homebridge, I found tuya-convert<\/code><\/a>. This is an alternative to Homebridge. Instead of registering the device to Homebridge, tuya-convert<\/code> claims that I can just flash the firmware and I can add the Gosund plug directly to HomeKit. Sounds attractive and I have to give it a shot. Long story short, I was successful with replacing the firmware, but when configuring the plug I provided wrong configuration data and as such I was locked out of the plug, effectively bricking the plug. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. While doing this exercise, I learned a lot about how to use esp-homekit-devices<\/a> project to turn any ESP8266 chip set and make it HomeKit compatible. This could be very handy in a future project, but for now let’s go back to Homebridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found that the version of homebridge on my NAS server was outdated, and so was the version of node. I backed up my existing homebridge configuration and proceed to uninstall homebridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I installed the latest stable version of node<\/code> as of the writing of this blog, v12.19.0<\/code>. I then followed these instructions<\/a> and installed the latest version of Homebridge. This new version came with a web based UI as well. For convenience, this is what I did:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm homebridge homebridge-config-ui-x\nsudo hb-service install --user homebridge<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
I then reinstalled the Homebridge plugins that I previously had, which included homebridge-camera-ffmpeg<\/code>, and my custom homebridge-kl-garage<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Gosund plugs effectively uses the Tuya IoT Platform. So instead of using the Gosund App, I downloaded the TuyaSmart App from the App Store<\/a>. The user interface is nearly identical to the Gosund App and I re-added the outlet with the TuyaSmart App.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now I’m ready to install the homebridge-tuya<\/code> plugin using the instructions here<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
% sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm homebridge-tuya<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
As per the instructions, I watched the YouTube video and followed its steps using the QR-Code method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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