Zigbee Tuya Gateway

A Zigbee Tuya gateway is the small white box that turns a pile of separate Zigbee devices into one system. It joins your Wi-Fi and runs a Zigbee 3.0 network of its own.

• What a Zigbee Tuya gateway is for
• Why Zigbee rather than putting everything on Wi-Fi
• Fifty devices, which is a large house
• Setting it up
• When to spend more than this

What a Zigbee Tuya gateway is for

Zigbee devices cannot talk to your router. They talk to each other and to a gateway, and the gateway is the only thing in the house that speaks both Zigbee and Wi-Fi. Without one, a Zigbee sensor is an inert lump of plastic.

With one, the sensors, switches, plugs, lights, curtain motors and locks all arrive in the same Tuya or Smart Life app and can be used in the same automation, regardless of which of them you bought first.

Why Zigbee rather than putting everything on Wi-Fi

Every mains-powered Zigbee device on the network repeats the signal to the next one. A plug in the corridor carries a sensor at the back of the house through to the hub. So the network gets stronger as you add to it, which is the opposite of what happens on Wi-Fi.

It also keeps your router free. Twenty Wi-Fi gadgets fighting for slots is where home networks start dropping connections, and it is a miserable thing to diagnose. Zigbee devices take none of those slots.

Fifty devices, which is a large house

The gateway carries up to fifty sub-devices. For scale, that is a sensor on every external door, motion in every room, a smart switch on most circuits and plugs on the appliances, in a house of a decent size, with room left over.

If you are planning past that, or across a compound with several buildings, tell us the layout and we will work out whether one gateway covers it.

Setting it up

Plug it in, add it in the app, then pair devices to it one at a time. There is no wiring and no configuration file. Each device has its own pairing step, usually holding a button until a light flashes, and the app walks through it.

Alexa and Google Assistant work once the gateway is added to the app, so voice control comes without any extra setup.

When to spend more than this

Take this one if what you own is Zigbee and what you want is for it all to work together. It is the cheapest way into a real Zigbee network and there is nothing to subscribe to.

Add infrared and Bluetooth Mesh with the three-in-one gateway if you also want the air conditioner and television under control. Choose the HomeKit version if the house runs on iPhones and you want everything in Apple Home. The Smart Life app is on Google Play.