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.
I just attempted to add some Govee H6004 bulbs to my hub, to replace Wyze bulbs, which work great, until there's Inet loss.
I installed them manually, and they are functional, except that the lag time is crazy at times. Some commands (simple on/off) are never executed, mut often there is a lag of up to 10 seconds at times.
Turning the same bulbs on and off via the Govee app on my phone is almost instantaneous. I've checked all the possible options, sniffed the 2.4 net, directly connected bulbs to closest mesh hub, added them to an IOT segment, and given them priority. Nothing seems to make it any better or worse. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Environment is Hub C7, TP Link BE10000 Wi-Fi 7 3 node mesh. It's running flawlessly. Bulb is on closest node (5 feet away), in an IOT vlan, an it has priority over other traffic.
Is the govee device setup to enable LAN Control in the Govee Home App?
Is the device preference setting in Hubitat set to "Enable Local Lan Control" turned on?
When you get delays of 10 seconds what are you trying to do?
When using LAN Control/API. It is generally very responsive, but if you submit several changes it can change for a moment. The retry logic will kick in, but may look like the command is delayed
The Govee Home app leans heavily on Bluetooth so it isn't really comparable.
The one that is part of HE, the only thing that hints at author of version is"Last edited by Robert 04/23/2026"
Is the govee device setup to enable LAN Control in the Govee Home App?
YES
Is the device preference setting in Hubitat set to "Enable Local Lan Control" turned on? Don't see anywhere to set that. When looking at device (bulb) settings it only shows commands affecting color / color temp etc. Where would this setting be?
When you get delays of 10 seconds what are you trying to do?
Right now just testing response, the intent was to use them outside running local, to replace Wyze bulbs for color for holidays. They currently sequence 3 colors across 6 bulbs, changing every 15 seconds. I was simply clicking ON/OFF in the browser and notices lag, and then failure after about 3-4 change.
When using LAN Control/API. It is generally very responsive, but if you submit several changes it can change for a moment. The retry logic will kick in, but may look like the command is delayed.
I've seen amazing velocity of changes in some videos of these bulbs syncing to sound and also to music. I know they CAN do the job, I just can't figure out why I'm seeing the lag. Are you using a method of confirmed delivery, not could possibly be turned off?
The Govee Home app leans heavily on Bluetooth so it isn't really comparable.
Is BT needed to operate these. I planned to use them outside, likely beyond BT range. I assumed they would be running only on wifi.
I appreciate your work in developing this integration and the time you've taken to respond. Please let me know if you have any other suggestions.
So that is not my integration. So the rest of my response is solely based on my understanding of the LAN API and not exactly what hubitat has done to make it work
The native Hubitat integration is more limited, and only supports LAN API. That isn't a bad thing for speed though.
The LAN API uses UDP which is a fire and forget protocol. If your wifi is really stretched to where those devices are, you could be loosing packets and that could cause problems with commands needing to retry or cause them to completely fail. Does your wifi gear give you any idea of the signal to the bulbs or tx retries.
Bluetooth isn't needed. I believe Govee uses it to increase responsiveness locally and reduce load on their cloud.
After all that you could try my integration which supports both LAN and Cloud ApI functions as well as a hybrid approach. It is a bit more feature rich, but can be a little bit more complicated to setup initially. That said if the problem is a wifi range/interferenceissue causing udp packet loss neither integration will do well. Mine would have a slight edge as in Cloud API mode it uses TCP because of the nature of how Cloud stuff works. TCP protocol does have transmission control components that ensure communication is completed. The problem is using cloud API can be much slower then lan controlled items on a very healthy wifi network.
After a second glance of the threads title i feel I should ask are you using a integration at all, or are they paired with Matter and using the generic Maatter light deiver?