3

I've been using the Tuya app on iPhone for a couple of months, first with a Devola heater which broke down in a month so I sent it back, now with a Mylek.
I didn't realise until I got the Mylek that the UI for Tuya is driven by the device manufacturer not Tuya itself, so the UI for the Mylek is totally different to the Devola [which worked perfectly].

The Mylek shows as online to the app, but offline to the Scene feature in Tuya, seemingly no matter what I do.

The Mylek works fine if I'm addressing it directly from its own GUI. The Mylek weekly timer (the [7] icon in the pic below), however, is an atrocious implementation, making me click one box per hour, for all 7 days, to set periods at which it should heat & to what temperature. It does actually work, though.
I decided instead to try the Scenes in Tuya itself. Set an on & off time, set a temperature [the rest I can figure out once I get this bit working].

On and working, from the Mylek GUI…

enter image description here

This communication works 2-way, if I change anything on the device's panel, it reflects here [so long as the child lock is off].

However, if I try to interact with the device in even the simplest way from the scheduler, it fails as 'offline'

enter image description here enter image description here

enter image description here

The device is quite clearly not offline. As far as I'm aware I have no firewalling at all inside this network subnet, only to the outside world.

Any ideas as to where to look next? Or anyone aware of this as a 'known issue'?
Tuya & Mylek's online help structures are both pretty obtuse & mainly written in Chinglish.

Since first writing this I have discovered, by accident, how to make 'stripes' for on/off periods in Mylek's own interface rather than having to tap in every single hour - something which had eluded me for days. I'd still prefer to be able to setup these as events instead, as they would provide finer granularity.

enter image description here

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

I have at least partially figured this out…

I noticed that the heater would appear offline any time my phone wasn't connected to my home Wi-Fi.

That made me suspect is was going to be a firewall issue. I have a corporate router [Sophos UTM] without UPnP, so often things that would appear to be fine actually get blocked. I'd already checked the firewall log entries & not seen anything obvious that was hitting it.

Long story short, I have now punched a hole straight through it in both directions, allowing any & all comms to & from that one MAC address.

This does indicate that the local 'direct' setting from the Mylek plugin for the app runs directly over the local subnet, but that any Tuya-specific data, such as scheduling, goes via Tuya.com & then has to be able to punch through from the outside world. This makes me think the Mylek device is not opening its own keep-alive from the inside, enabling a return message to come back down the same 'open line'.

This is not an ideal long-term solution & I shall add to this answer when I discover exactly what ports & services I need to hone this down to, so I'm not effectively running it in a DMZ.

Improve this answer
2
  • So far, my direct enquiries with Mylek have produced such stunningly detailed technical replies as "Our response is shown below. We hope it answers your question fully. Once connected to the Tuya App the Heater can be programmed from anywhere in the world once connected at home location."… which, of course, says absolutely nothing.
    – Tetsujin
    Mar 24, 2022 at 16:30
  • I asked Mylek for clarification after their last mindless-bot reply. As is oh so common these days… they just ignored me. That's two companies in two months I'm never going to buy from ever again. The last was Devola, who also stopped responding after I queried their first read-it-off-a-card response.
    – Tetsujin
    Mar 30, 2022 at 11:48

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.