Tuya Bluetooth Hub Wifi Smart Home Bridge

The Tuya Bluetooth hub is the small white box that turns a Bluetooth lock into one you can use from anywhere. It plugs in, joins your Wi-Fi, and everything Bluetooth in range starts appearing in the Tuya or Smart Life app whether you are in the house or not.

• What the hub actually adds
• Which of our locks need one
• Where to put a Tuya Bluetooth hub
• What happens when the internet drops
• Do you actually need one

Most of the cheaper smart locks talk Bluetooth, not Wi-Fi. On their own they are perfectly good locks: finger, code, card, key. What they cannot do is let you send a code to a guest while you are at work, or tell you the door opened at eleven at night. That is what this adds.

The locks in our range that need it are the S604L rose handles, the fingerprint cylinder, the keypad cylinder, the padlocks and the key box. It is not only for locks: any Tuya Bluetooth or Bluetooth mesh device in range comes through it.

Setup is the usual Tuya routine and takes a few minutes. Once it is running, it keeps working over Bluetooth locally even if the internet is down, so a broadband outage does not lock you out of your own devices. Range is the thing to plan for: put it as near the door as a socket allows, because Bluetooth does not go far through walls.

What the hub actually adds

Most of the cheaper smart locks talk Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi. On their own they are perfectly good locks: finger, code, card, key, all working at the door. What they cannot do is let you send a code to a guest while you are at work, or tell you that the door opened at eleven at night.

That is the job of a Tuya Bluetooth hub. It plugs in, joins your Wi-Fi, and everything Bluetooth in range starts appearing in the Tuya or Smart Life app whether you are in the house or not.

Which of our locks need one

The S604L rose handles, the fingerprint cylinder, the keypad cylinder, both padlocks and the key box are the ones that need a Tuya Bluetooth hub for remote access. Each of those pages says so on it.

It is not only for locks. Any Tuya Bluetooth or Bluetooth mesh device in range comes through it, including sensors and mesh lighting groups, so one hub often covers several things you were going to buy separately.

Where to put a Tuya Bluetooth hub

Range is the thing to plan for. Bluetooth does not travel far through walls, so put the hub as near the door as a socket allows rather than in a cupboard at the other end of the house. If the lock is on a gate, the nearest indoor socket to that gate is the right one.

What happens when the internet drops

Once it is running it keeps working over Bluetooth locally even if the internet is down, so a broadband outage does not lock you out of your own devices. You lose the remote side until the line comes back, not the local one.

Setup is the usual Tuya routine: plug it in, add it in the app, and it takes a few minutes. It carries Wi-Fi on 2.4 GHz plus Bluetooth and Bluetooth mesh, and works with the voice assistants and integrations Tuya supports.

Do you actually need one

Ask before you add it to the basket. If every smart device you own is Wi-Fi, you do not. This exists for the Bluetooth ones: the S604L handles, both cylinders, both padlocks and the key box. Their pages each say so.

Put it in the socket nearest the door rather than in a cupboard down the hall, because Bluetooth does not travel well through walls. Local control keeps working if your line drops, so an outage costs you the remote features and nothing else. See the locks that need it, and Tuya document the platform at tuya.com.