tuyapi VS Meross

If I want to buy switches or sensors from Ali/Tuya can I pair them to any hub or do I need to use the tuya api: https://github.com/codetheweb/tuyapi?

If you prefer Zigbee in general - cool. But saying Zigbee is better than Wi-Fi because there's this one sucky application Smart Life that forces your phone connected to 2.4 to let you setup doesn't make sense. Just use a different application to set it up. Or you can block Tuya IPs for fully local operation. https://github.com/codetheweb/tuyapi/

My LED lights are by a company called Smart Life, and their service is provided by Tuya (don't know if they're the same) But I essentially looked into this code repository and followed the guidelines https://github.com/codetheweb/tuyapi then all I had to do was connect it to a twitch bot running on my computer and converting the color into numbers that the lights understood :)

You can link your account to their developer tools, and use tuyapi (https://github.com/codetheweb/tuyapi ) to get them set up, and use BN-Link devices that are $25 for a 4-pack

It doesn't seem like Smartlife has any public/open API. There's an unofficial hack but it seem to communicate over TCP/IP which Automate currently doesn't support: https://github.com/codetheweb/tuyapi

Try these steps https://github.com/codetheweb/tuyapi/blob/master/docs/SETUP.md

By the way, those Minoston outdoor outlet switches use the Smart Life app which seems to be also used by Tuya devices, and there is some talk of controlling Tuya stuff in C4 with an MQTT driver. There is some Tuya code on the web (https://github.com/codetheweb/tuyapi) so you could probably control that with a little bit of work in C4.

Yes, a few of us have seen this behaviour too, however there is a potential fix detailed here: https://github.com/bytespider/Meross/issues/13#issuecomment-771241801