Govee Control

What?

An Android app for controlling Govee BLE smart lights locally over Bluetooth Low Energy.

Currently compatible with:

Govee RGBICW Smart Floor Lamp Basic - Model H6076

Why?

Requiring yet another account for the Govee Home app irked me. What's even worse is that they added a social media feature into the app, letting you ... share pictures of your RGB lamp? Let me just turn my damn lights on without needing a password!

How?

I use Kotlin as my daily driver, but have never created an Android app before. While I'm doing the tutorials and reading the Android Studio docs, I needed to be able to turn my lamps on and change the brightness etc, ASAP. With this time-constraint, I shamelessly used Claude Code (Sonnet 4.5) to agentically produce nearly all of the app. With that in mind, I made sure to cite (hopefully) all of the links it used as resources.

Build & Install

./gradlew assembleDebug
~/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools/adb install -r -t app/build/intermediates/apk/debug/app-debug.apk

How to Configure

Devices and groups are defined in app/src/main/assets/govee_config.json. To add your own lights, you need three pieces of information per device:

1. Name — whatever you want to call it
2. MAC address — the Bluetooth MAC of the Govee device (find it in the Govee Home app under device settings, or via a BLE scanner like nRF Connect)
3. Model — the Govee model number (e.g. H6076), which determines which BLE service/characteristic UUIDs and command templates to use

Example config:

{
  "models": {
    "H6076": {
      "service_uuid": "00010203-0405-0607-0809-0a0b0c0d1910",
      "write_char_uuid": "00010203-0405-0607-0809-0a0b0c0d2b11",
      "commands": {
        "power_on":   "33010100",
        "power_off":  "33010000",
        "brightness": "3304{value}",
        "color":      "33051501{r}{g}{b}00000000007f"
      }
    }
  },
  "devices": [
    { "name": "My Lamp", "mac": "AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF", "model": "H6076" }
  ],
  "groups": [
    {
      "name": "Living Room",
      "devices": ["AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF"]
    }
  ]
}

• models: Defines the BLE UUIDs and command hex templates for each Govee model. Placeholders like {value}, {r}, {g}, {b} are substituted at runtime.
• devices: List of individual lights with their MAC addresses and model reference.
• groups: Optional groupings of devices by MAC address. Sending a command to a group sends it to all member devices.

After editing the config, rebuild and reinstall the app.

BLE Protocol References

The Govee BLE command protocol used in this project was informed by the following reverse engineering efforts:

• BeauJBurroughs/Govee-H6127-Reverse-Engineering - H6127 command structure and keepalive packet format
• chvolkmann/govee_btled - Python BLE controller documenting the 33 05 02 RR GG BB color command format (non-RGBIC bulbs)
• Obi2000/Govee-H6199-Reverse-Engineering - H6199 RGBIC segment color command (33 05 0b) with segment bitmask
• KunaalKumar/Govee-H6072-Reverse-Engineering - H6072 color mode switching
• egold555/Govee-Reverse-Engineering - Multi-model Govee protocol documentation
• Govee BLE protocol discussion (loxforum.com) - H6076 segment control and scene commands
• Reverse Engineering Govee Smart Lights (blog.coding.kiwi) - General methodology using HCI snoop logs and Wireshark

Command Format

All commands are 20-byte BLE packets: variable-length command data padded to 19 bytes, followed by a 1-byte XOR checksum.

Command	Hex Template	Source
Power On	33 01 01 00 ...	H6127 RE, loxforum
Power Off	33 01 00 00 ...	H6127 RE, loxforum
Brightness	33 04 XX 00 ... (XX = 0x00-0xFF)	H6127 RE, loxforum
Color (RGBIC)	33 05 0b RR GG BB 00 00 FF 7F ...	H6199 RE, loxforum
Color (simple bulbs)	33 05 02 RR GG BB 00 ...	govee_btled, H6127 RE
Keepalive	AA 01 00 ... (sent every 2s)	H6127 RE

H6076 Color/Color Temperature Command

The H6076 uses 33 05 15 01 for both RGB color and color temperature, with a 7-segment bitmask at byte 12. Confirmed via BLE HCI snoop log from the official Govee app.

Full byte layout

33 05 15 01 RR GG BB KK KK ?? ?? ?? 7F 00 00 00 00 00 00 XOR
            |color | |temp|          |segment bitmask (7 segments)

• Bytes 4–6 (RR GG BB): RGB color values
• Bytes 7–8 (KK KK): Color temperature in Kelvin, big-endian 16-bit integer (range 2000–9000)
• Byte 12 (7F): Segment bitmask — 0x7F = 0111 1111 = all 7 segments

Color temperature behavior (from Govee LAN API docs)

Per Govee WLAN guide, the colorTemInKelvin field (mapped to bytes 7–8 over BLE) behaves as follows:

• When Kelvin != 0: The device converts the Kelvin value to warm/cool white LED segment levels internally, ignoring RGB values
• When Kelvin == 0: The device uses the raw RGB values instead

Snoop log examples

Action	Hex	Notes
Warm white	33 05 15 01 FF FF FF 08 98 FF 98 29 7F ...	Kelvin bytes = 08 98 = 2200K
Cool white	33 05 15 01 FF FF FF 19 64 FF F9 FB 7F ...	Kelvin bytes = 19 64 = 6500K
Red	33 05 15 01 FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 7F ...	Kelvin = 00 00 = pure RGB mode

Kelvin bytes and RGB mode

Sending Kelvin = 00 00 in the 15 01 color command does not kill the white LED segments. It simply means "use raw RGB mode" — the white segments retain whatever state they were last set to. RGB colors work fine with 00 00 in the Kelvin position.

Bytes 9–11 (FF 98 29 / FF F9 FB in the examples above) are not yet fully understood — they may encode additional segment mixing or fine-tuning parameters.

15 02 sub-command (segment control) — DANGER

The 33 05 15 02 XX YY ... sub-command directly writes to the warm/cool white LED segment hardware registers. This state is persistent — values written here stick and affect all subsequent commands regardless of mode.

• Byte 4 (XX): White segment brightness. Setting to 00 kills brightness across the entire lamp.
• Byte 5 (YY): Minimal observable effect, purpose unclear.
• Setting both to 00 via 15 02 makes the lamp appear very dim (only RGB LEDs active, white segments off).
• The only way to recover is to send a non-zero value via 15 02, or use the Govee app to reset.

This sub-command should not be exposed to users as a slider without a minimum value guard. The app currently uses hardcoded raw presets (Warm White / Cool White from snoop captures) instead, which use the safer 15 01 command with Kelvin bytes.

Commands that did NOT work (for reference):

Sub-command	Format	Why it failed
15 02 (segment control)	33 05 15 02 XX YY 00 ...	Directly writes to white LED segment hardware registers. State is persistent — zeroing out kills brightness for all subsequent commands. Not suitable for color temperature control.
15 01 without bitmask	33 05 15 01 RR GG BB 00 ...	Missing 0x7F at byte 12 — no segments addressed
02 (manual)	33 05 02 RR GG BB 00 ...	Wrong sub-command for H6076
0b (RGBIC bitmask)	33 05 0b RR GG BB 00 00 FF 7F ...	H6199 format, not compatible
04 (scene)	33 05 04 RR GG BB ...	Interpreted RGB bytes as scene ID
0a 20 03 (init)	Sent before color command	Triggered a multicolor scene

TODO

• Add devices via Bluetooth scanning in-app (instead of hardcoded config)
• Persist device/config changes with local storage
• Dynamically generate groups from devices[].name prefix (e.g. "Living Room Lamp L" and "Living Room Lamp R" → "Living Room Lamp" group)