Tuya based thermostat - tuya-lan-find not working, Tuya IoT Platform key and dev id not working

[mariusr22]

Hello,

I'm trying to expose a Tuya based thermostat in homekit through homebridge-tuya-lan plugin. I tried using tuya-lan-find method to get the dev id and local key but I keep getting "Error Socket hangup" message.
I created a IoT dev account on Tuya and registered my deveice on a fictive project there and I was able to extract local key and dev id but I tried them in the plugin and it does not seem to work properly,
I researched some more on this github and reddit and I found a similar issue where the advice was to update to latest RC version for this plugin. I did that, and now the messages in the Homebridge Logs are something like:

"Raw message from Thermostat (3.1) with command 8" and a lot of jibberish after that with mangled characters or long line of numbers with no meaning.

Is the plugin still working fine?
Has Tuya modified it's devices security that we are unable to use their devices in homebridge without their IoT developper api license of $100,000 per year?
Should the dev id and local key extracted from IoT platform work locally, or there are different local key and dev id once the device connects locally?

I appreciate any input or maybe someone hit the same blockages as I did, managed to overcome them and would be kind enough to share.

Thank you,
Marius