What is IoT App SDK?

Specially built for IoT mobile app development, Tuya IoT App SDK provides a selection of components and code samples to quickly turn your IoT visions into realities respecting the connection and control of IoT devices and the application of smart scenes.

Why develop IoT apps?

IoT apps serve as the intermediate that mates IoT devices with mobile phones. You can use an IoT app to get smart devices synchronized after they are connected to the cloud and grant the devices seamless access to key data. This allows users to remotely manage IoT devices with little effort.

Apps are the must-have part of IoT systems to simplify the smart control of variant devices and bring your IoT mechanisms bang up-to-date. Mobile apps far outweigh web apps on the performance front for IoT-enabled automation.

• Mobile phones are more suitable for remote control of IoT devices.

• Each mobile phone integrates multiple sensors and extends the number of connection options supported, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular networks.

• IoT apps are the ideal option for mobile phones to pass geographic and other data through to IoT devices and the cloud. You can unlock the potential for smart scenes.

  For example, an IoT mobile app can be installed to track a user’s location in smart life scenarios. When the user comes close to home, the app automatically switches on the air conditioner to warm up or cool down before the user arrives at home.

Mobile phones are proved to be better-value terminals for the management of IoT devices. IoT mobile app fans abound around the world.

Advantages

Tuya IoT App SDK empowers the implementation of features such as user accounts, device pairing, and device management. You can benefit from the following advantages of the SDK:

• Easy integration: allows quick start with sample code, sample apps, and connection cases.
• Extensive development components: enables software development based on components such as extension SDKs and UI BizBundles that meet you where you are.
• Comprehensive functional modules: supports a full range of smart modules, such as users, devices, and smart scenes. You only need to implement simple UI programming.
• Compatibility with popular communication protocols: manages products over common network protocols by using an all-in-one app.
• Global data security: features all-around data protections based on the dual-channel security encryption, five-layer security strategy, and global data security compliance. This ensures the security and privacy of user data.
• Global service stability: deploys workloads across smart clouds worldwide. This allows your app to easily support more than 10 million devices and process concurrent requests from more than 10,000,000 users.

Categories

Smart Life App SDK

Tuya Smart Life App SDK empowers mobile apps based on sufficient components and samples to simplify home automation. For more information, see Smart Life App SDK.

Commercial Lighting App SDK

Tuya provides a broad portfolio of IoT control systems to bring existing and new commercial lighting solutions to market wherever and whenever you are ready. End-to-end services cover the full process from devices, software, and construction. Green buildings and healthy buildings can deliver ongoing value with smart features, such as device management, energy management, and human centric lighting.

Tuya Commercial Lighting App SDK helps to build mobile apps on your terms and turn your ideas into integral innovation with Tuya’s commercial lighting solutions. For more information, see Commercial Lighting App SDK.

Smart Community App SDK

Tuya Smart Community PaaS enables a variety of features based on community services. For example, update basic information of a community in real time, and build unified community management databases with households (people) as the core. Houses, addresses, vehicles, relationships, and other details are linked by household in the databases. These features apply to newly-built communities and renovation projects of old communities. Integral services are provided for purposes ranging from benefiting owners to facilitating software control.

Tuya Smart Community App SDK is used to develop mobile apps for Smart Community PaaS. Based on the SDK, you can quickly implement app functionality during app development. For more information, see Smart Community App SDK.

Smart Residence App SDK

Tuya provides comprehensive IoT control systems to empower apartment rental management solutions and tap into the space rental market respecting apartments, hotels, and houses booked online. End-to-end services cover the full process from devices to mobile apps.

Tuya Smart Residence App SDK is used to develop mobile apps for smart apartment rental scenarios. Based on the SDK, you can quickly implement app functionality during app development. For more information, see Smart Residence App SDK.

Useful knowledge

IoT device

As a big improvement over traditional devices, each IoT device is supplied with a printed circuit board (PCB) populated with network modules. These modules enable IoT devices to be connected to the internet over protocols, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This way, an IoT device can communicate with the cloud and mobile apps.

Tuya provides open source SDKs to get firmware up and running on terminals. You can extend business value through the easy and efficient development of IoT solutions.

Communications

In an IoT solution, IoT devices can receive data and commands from the cloud and report local data to the cloud. Example:

1. A thermometer can be configured to report temperature data to the cloud on an hourly basis.
2. The cloud can send commands to the air conditioner in a room to enable the cooling or heating mode.

Abundant computing resources are provided for mobile phones and other terminals. However, it is not the case for IoT devices that have the following limits:

1. Limited capabilities and computing resources are available.
2. Networking might be unstable or costly.
3. Dedicated, customized, or industry-specific application protocols are required in certain scenarios.

To fix these issues, SDKs bring you on the right path to build secure and reliable connections between smart devices and the cloud.

Tuya IoT App SDK and Tuya IoT Cloud support communications over Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT). MQTT is a publish-subscribe-based messaging protocol that runs over TCP/IP. The protocol is designed for bandwidth-efficient connections with memory-limited IoT devices in unreliable networking conditions. MQTT is a perfect fit for IoT communications.

Tuya IoT Cloud

In IoT solutions, the Tuya IoT Cloud supports the following features:

• Collect, visualize, and analyze the data that is transmitted by sensors and IoT devices.
• Send commands from the cloud to specific IoT devices.
• Manage the firmware that is installed on IoT devices.
• Support protocols to enable communications between different hardware and software.
• Authenticate IoT devices and user identities to ensure data security.

Panel Center

Each panel is a program that runs on the Tuya Smart Life app, an OEM app, or an app developed based on Tuya UI BizBundles. It is a graphical user interface (GUI) application that controls Powered by Tuya devices.

Compared with native apps, a panel is developed based on React Native. This framework allows you to write once and run anywhere across multiple platforms. In addition, panel development supports hot updates. The review of app publishing is no longer very much a work in progress. App updates, iterations, and bug fixes can be launched with a few simple steps. For more information, see Panel SDKs and Panel Studio.