Hi all. I’m using SharpTools with a pair of Tuyo smart outlets, so that I can use Bixby to control them via SmartThings. It works as intended. However, every single day, the first time I use a voice command to control the device I get an error “connect device to the internet and try again”. If I open the SharpTools app and manually toggle the outlet from off to on, I’m then able to use voice commands again.
Is there any reason that the SharpTools device would cease to communicate with SmartThings every day? It seems that a simple change of device status is enough to reinitialize it, so it doesn’t appear to be a configuration problem. Any assistance would be appreciated.
Tuya devices are kind of finnicky in my experience. Could be the smartthings healthcheck is kicking in and it thinks the device is offline when the bixby command is sent.
But sharptools probably sends the command without any consideration to the healthcheck and that causes smartthings to think the device is online again when it reports back which lets bixby work again.
I’m not super familiar with the healthcheck. Is that something that occurs at a predictable interval? Is there a command that I can send that will restore the connection, aside from actually toggling the device on and then off again? I can automate that part in Tasker, I’m just not sure what command/action to use.
It’s a virtual switch, and it looks like the only actions available via Tasker are toggle, on, off, and ping. I’ll try “ping” tomorrow, that’d be the only action that wouldn’t turn the associated devices on.
Failing that, I’ve set up a Task to run shortly after my morning alarm, that’ll get the status of the outlet and either turn it on and then off again, or just turn it off if for some reason it’s on. Seems like a silly solution, but it’ll work in the absence of a better one.
I think the longer term solution will be to just get outlets with local control that don’t need multiple applications to function.
It is Tuya, it’s a “smart” outlet, and I have two of them. I have Tuya Smart linked to SmartThings via Linked Services, and the two outlet devices appear as virtual switches in SmartThings. I am also able to see and control these devices via SharpTools, and I can use the SharpTools Tasker plugin to create automations that send commands via SharpTools.
Up until now, the only way I’ve been able to get SmartThings to see the devices after a period of inactivity is to go into the SharpTools app and click the on/off button for the device. But that’s getting annoying, so I’m going to try to use Tasker to automate the process of toggling the devices using SharpTools in the morning, thus “priming” them for normal use via Bixby or SmartThings when I get up.
I will definitely not be buying any Tuya devices in the future, but these were a gift so I’m trying to make them work as well as they can.
You mean they literally show the device type as “Virtual Switch” in the smartthings ide?
I could have sworn I’ve seen people run into this in the smartthings community before and use either webcore or sharptools to get the devices to report back online to smartthings, but I cant seem to find the threads now.
Sorry, it’s been a while since I set these up. I dug into it and it’s a bit more complex than I had remembered. Apparently the Tuya devices won’t show up in SmartThings after linking the service, but if you create a “tap-to-run” automation in the Tuya app, that can be shared to SmartThings by way of SharpTools. They appear as switches in the smartthings app, but do not appear in the list of devices in the IDE at all.