I had a couple of can lights out in my home and figured I would take the chance to try some home automation. I ordered a C8 pro (2.4.3.172), a pack of four Zigbee bulbs for table lamps in the living room, a couple of presence sensors and four Govee recessed lights to retrofit into my existing ceiling cans.
This was almost a month ago, and I so far the only thing that I can't get to work is the can lights (the entire reason for the project).
I am new to this stuff as I am very creeped out by the cloud aspect of most home automation products. Because of this, I do not have an in-home corporate listening device of any flavor.
I have made repeated attempts at pairing these matter lights to my HE.
My Orbi router will not allow me to turn off 5ghz wifi. My phone will not allow me to set a connection to 2.4ghz-only. I pulled an old (no 5ghz) phone out of my old phone drawer to try it with the Hubitat app, but the app is too large for the screen on that phone and it will not allow me to press the continue button.
I can get the google home app to find the lights, but setup will not pass a certain point because I do not have a google hub.
My main question at this point is:
If I do get these matter lights working with my HE, will their operation (after provisioning with a cloud-based hub) be local-only, or will they still need to interact with google / amazon / apple web services?
If they will always be a less-integrated cloud-based solution, I'll just try to find something similar in a zigbee light.
My brief time with HE has shown me that the standard claimed on the box (zigbee / zwave / matter) doesn't guarantee any level of compatibility (not specific to HE, I realize).
" Govee Smart Recessed Lighting 6 Inch, Matter RGBIC LED Recessed Light Work with Alexa, Google Assistant, Dimmable 1100LM Canless Downlight with Junction Box for Living Room, Bedroom, Kitchen 4 Pack"
That is the description of the lights on amazon. Unable to post link and I couldn't find them on Govee's website.
Have you tried using the Govee app on your mobile phone to at least get these lights on the network and talking? Some vendor specific apps allow you to then generate a Matter pairing code that can be used to add these to another Matter Controller, like Hubitat.
Matter over WiFi and Matter over Thread devices communicate locally on your LAN to the Matter Controller(s) that they are paired with.
Note: I do not personally use Govee devices, so no firsthand experience. Hopefully others with Govee lights will chime in as well.
Those are the lights. I really like the night light ring and didn't see anything else that had them.
I should have mentioned that I did try the Govee app, but it gets about as far as the google home app. Neither will pass a certain point (and give up the 11 digit code) without a hub.
I am waiting for an old galaxy tablet to finish updating to see if I can make any progress with that. I'm not holding my breath, but I was already rummaging through the old phone drawer.
Weird. I have other Govee devices, and they do not need a hub. I don't think Govee makes a hub. My Govee lights are WiFi and provisioning them requires cloud access. After being provisioned, they are controlled locally using an integration by @mavrrick58.
I'm tagging @mavrrick58 because I think their input on this thread would be very valuable.
I looked at some of his posts and drivers, but it looked like most of that was for wifi products and these lights are matter only.
I could definitely be wrong. This is all new to me and reading technical posts is like trying to understand a language I don't speak.
I don't know that the hub needs to be live or if there just needs to have been a hub tied to the account at some point just to temporarily assign the light to that hub before transitioning it to the HE.
After charging and updating, my old tablet isn't old enough and still has 5ghz wifi. I'll keep charging old devices and checking.
What happens when you use the Hubitat Mobile App on your smartphone to try and Matter Commision one of these Govee Matter over WiFi lights? Please share screenshots so the community can better assist you.
They are Matter over Wifi lights. But they are also supported by the Govee app without any Matter involvement (i.e. using Matter is optional). Govee makes other products that are very similar to these lights in that they also Matter over WiFi, including the ones that I use.
Most likely the device supports the Govee cloud, Govee Lan, and Matter. Each one will have its pros and cons. The most functional method is likely Lan API through my integration.
That said every option requires using the Govee home app to perform initial setup. Even to use MATTER you will need to initially setup the decice in the Govee Home app and connect the device to wifi. Once that is done you can use the Matter code on the device or in the app to connect to Hubitat's Matter integration.
First thing is to get the device added to the Govee Home app.
Thank you for your help. I uninstalled and reinstalled the govee app on my phone and finally got it to connect. From the messages, it seemed to connect by bluetooth (5ghz wifi for phone, so they probably get around it by using bluetooth.
I suspect I may have not allowed a permission when I installed the app last time. I get stingy with access permissions when I install an app. This is the first full day I've had to dig into this and the help here has been great.
Thanks you. I am still learning the vocabulary and will probably mess it up a lot more before I'm anywhere near competent.
I am very glad that I should be able to get these lights to work. For other can locations a straight dimmer will work fine, but I wanted the night light and color for these locations (living room usually lit with table and floor lamps and corridor through kitchen).
If you are using my Govee Integration v2. Let me know if you have any quirks with it. There may need to be a custom driver as it sounds like the device may have some unique characteristics.
