Govee Icicle Lights with Matter - Preamble

Icicle lights hanging off the roof

  MOAR RGB. The rallying cry of PC Master Race brethren, mouth breathing incels, or general tech enthusiasts; but when the holidays arrive, everyone but the most withdrawn curmudgeons festoon their homes with lights of all shapes and colors. 

  Now one cannot be content with lights with fixed colors, or even those with a few varying colors. No, one must demand holiday lights that can be set to every color of the rainbow, even if they will inevitably be set to winter whites and blues, or more vibrant reds and greens. Govee has been carving out a cost effective yet technically competent niche for lighting in all manners of form factors. As with many vendors, they are slowly scratching a bulwark into the Matter standard, which promises to let them interoperate with vendors across the major smart home landscape.

  In terms of mounting hardware, the lights come with clever clips that have space enough to clamp onto gutters, and grooves that allow them to slip under roof tiles with a confident amount of grip. The Icicle Lights proved easy to configure within the Govee app - they were recognized via Bluetooth and prompted to configure WiFi. The Govee app comes with a variety of color effects and schedule capabilities.

  Things became less clear on the Matter front, specifically attempting to configure with SmartThings, where I tend to centralize my automation (Hue outdoor lights clicking on at sunset, for one). After Govee put the lights on WiFi, SmartThings prompted to add the lights and cycled through the steps, until it hit WiFi configuration and halted. 24 hours and Google searches leading into dark alleys, my mind churned on the issue until the notion occurred to configure the lights in SmartThings first. A long press of the control panel button reset the lights, a QR scan followed, and soon enough the lights were configured in SmartThings successfully. After this, I was able to add the lights to the Govee app and get all the lighting effects therein, but still have control from SmartThings as expected. 

  We'll look at a more in-depth review, along with covering the Outdoor Permanent Lights 2, which bring with them limited white light along with the usual RGB spectrum as well as Matter support.

Icicle lights at the edge mixed with Hue string lights