In the previous article, we analyzed the fundamental difference between cloud-based and local control architectures. Today, we’ll ground those concepts by diving into the real market to understand what exactly we’re buying when we acquire a smart device.
When we buy a WiFi plug or bulb, we rarely purchase an isolated product. In reality, we are entering a provider’s ecosystem, and often, their servers.
That’s why two devices that look nearly identical on the outside can behave radically differently when we try to integrate them into Home Assistant. The casing matters little; the platform inside is almost everything.
Commercially, the market is mainly divided into two major blocks: the Asian giants dominating low-cost hardware, and the big tech companies trying to monopolize home control.
Let’s dissect how each one works underneath.
Tuya and SmartLife
If you’ve ever bought a cheap smart home device from an unknown brand, it’s almost certain that internally it’s a Tuya device.
Tuya Smart is not a traditional manufacturer of bulbs or plugs. Their business model is to be an IoT platform as a service (PaaS/SaaS). They provide the communication chip (network hardware), the firmware, the cloud server infrastructure, and the mobile app.
Any plastics or electronics manufacturer can pay Tuya to integrate their chip into a product and sell it under their own name.
This explains why the SmartLife app and the official Tuya app are so similar: both serve as the gateway to the same ecosystem, even though they are distributed as different applications.
Advantages
The Tuya ecosystem has an immense hardware catalog. Literally, a Tuya device exists for anything you can imagine, at unbeatable prices. However, at the architecture level, it presents serious problems:
Disadvantages
- Extreme cloud dependency: The vast majority of Tuya devices depend on their servers to function.
- Variety of silicon: Historically, many Tuya modules used Espressif’s ESP8266 microcontrollers, which are easy to replace with custom firmware. Recent models also feature chips from Beken or Realtek, so we cannot assume a device is flashable without first checking the specific module.
Although Tuya is a closed cloud system, later in the course we will see how to integrate it into Home Assistant using its official API to unify it with the rest of our home.
Sonoff and eWeLink
At the other end of the Asian spectrum, we find Sonoff, the main brand of the company ITEAD Studio. Sonoff became famous in the home community for manufacturing extremely cheap and accessible relays.
Unlike Tuya’s OEM model, Sonoff manufactures its own hardware from start to finish and uses its own platform and mobile app eWeLink.
Much of Sonoff’s success among tech enthusiasts came from its models based on ESP8266 and ESP32, many of which have accessible programming pins (RX, TX, 3V3, GND). Still, it’s wise to check each model and hardware revision before buying for modification.
Advantages
- LAN Mode (Local): Many Sonoff/eWeLink devices come with native LAN mode, allowing control within our network without going out to the Internet, mitigating the cloud problem.
- Ease of modification in compatible models: When they have an ESP and expose the pins, it’s possible to install local control systems like Tasmota or ESPHome. This is a technical operation and not all current models allow it.
Disadvantages
- Slightly more expensive: In some modules, Sonoff no longer competes as aggressively on price as the cheaper Tuya clones.
- Less variety: The catalog is extensive, but doesn’t match the sheer number of sensors, plugs, LED strips, weird switches, and OEM gadgets found in the Tuya ecosystem.
- Initial dependence on eWeLink: Although many devices support LAN mode or can be flashed, out of the box they are still designed to work through their app and cloud.
The European alternative: Shelly
We can’t talk about smart home providers for advanced users without mentioning Shelly (the Bulgarian brand we knew for years as Allterco Robotics).
Shelly has adopted a completely different philosophy from the rest. They sell WiFi (and now Bluetooth/Gen3) devices at a slightly higher price than the Asian ones, but with a massive technical advantage: they are designed for local control from day one.
Shelly devices include an internal web server out of the box. You can access their IP from your browser and activate standard protocols like MQTT or CoAP. You don’t need to flash them for absolute local control.
Buying criteria before checkout
Before buying a smart home device, it’s a good idea to do a little research beforehand. You don’t need to write a thesis, but you should check three things: if it has local integration, what protocol it uses, and if the community has already tested it with Home Assistant.
A quick search for the exact model along with keywords like Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT, LocalTuya, ESPHome, or Tasmota usually saves a lot of money. If nobody has managed to integrate it without the manufacturer’s cloud, then that €7 bargain probably wasn’t such a bargain.
In home automation, the real price of a device isn’t just what you pay when you buy it. It also includes the time you’ll waste integrating it, the limitations it imposes on you, and the risk that one day the manufacturer will cut off the supply.
The tech giants
On the other hand, we have the usual suspects trying to dominate your living room. Their approach usually requires more expensive hardware and features more closed ecosystems.
Apple’s solution is, as expected, closed but technically solid in terms of topology. HomeKit stands out because its architecture prioritizes local execution.
If you have an Apple TV or a HomePod, this device acts as a “Hub” or coordinator within your home. Commands between your iPhone and the bulb travel encrypted over your local network without passing through third-party servers. The major downside is the “Apple tax”: devices certified for HomeKit are usually significantly more expensive, and if you don’t use iOS, you’re out of the ecosystem.
SmartThings started as a very robust hardware platform (they sold their own physical Hubs with Zigbee and Z-Wave radios). Currently, Samsung has pivoted towards a more software-based model, integrating the hub into their TVs and refrigerators, heavily relying on cloud integrations.
While it supports local automations for devices paired directly via the Zigbee protocol, many of its integrations depend on cloud-to-cloud APIs.
Finally, there are Google and Amazon. Google Assistant and Alexa were primarily born as voice assistants and integration platforms, although their current hubs can also locally control certain Matter and Thread devices.
Voice and many manufacturer integrations still depend on external services. When you say “Alexa, turn on the light,” the command may pass through Amazon’s servers and the manufacturer’s API. However, the path depends on the device and the integration used, so it’s no longer correct to describe the entire ecosystem as 100% cloud-dependent.
Why do we need to unify them?
As we’ve seen, if we buy hardware at random, we’ll end up with a Sonoff relay controlled by eWeLink, two plugs in SmartLife, a Shelly thermostat, and a Google speaker.
The real technical challenge of home automation isn’t turning these devices on, but getting a Tuya door sensor to turn on a Shelly bulb, locally, without relying on three servers along the way.
To achieve this, we need to stop using saturated WiFi as the sole communication method and start using protocols specific to IoT. In the next article, we will thoroughly analyze network hardware: WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and the new Thread and Matter standards.
