Has anyone tried C by GE

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Hi,

Wondering if anyone has tried the C by GE smart switches and bulbs yet?

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Same question here. I have a couple bulbs laying around.

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I just bought two of the Wi-Fi toggle switches, they have support for Alexa, Google Home, and list HomeKit, but I think that’s just for pulling HomeKit accessories into their app, not sharing it back (no HomeKit codes in the box, and not labeled as such on the box).

Playing with them now…

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hey you can make a script with python-laurel module here is the github and this might help
i think it uses blue.py to turn it off and on over bluetooth
hope that helps

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I’m new to Home Assistant and have a few of these light bulbs. I found the following link; Add documentation for the C by GE component..

I have yet to try it, but wanted to share here.

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hi.
Did you get it to work?

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No, I never tried this. The bulbs that I have are bluetooth and I cannot seem to get a reliable connection to them and I prefer WiFi bulbs.

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Not sure if its still relevant, but I was able to get these C By GE products to work with a fair amount of ease. You’ll need to have the bulbs/switches added to the GE app, and a C-Reach to act as a bridge, and will have to reset it to factory before proceeding. Also, as a side note, take a picture of the pairing code on the back of the device or write it down before you begin.

Start by using the C By GE app to join the C-Reach to your network. Once it’s joined, it should be in a pairing state at which point, go to the Integrations page in Home Assistant and add the ‘HomeKit Controller’ Integration. Select the C-Reach device from the list at which point you’ll be prompted for the HomeKit pairing code from the back of the device. From there you should be set, I have a couple of the WiFi only switches, as well as some of the Wifi/Bluetooth switches and they showed up immediately thereafter.

Additionally, you can then use the ‘HomeKit’ Integration (HomeKit Bridge) to bring the devices back to HomeKit in order to use Siri/HomeKit.

Hope this helps someone, I dug around for weeks trying to figure out how to do this and couldn’t get anywhere.

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Hi Cecil,
Do any of the other sensors show up as useable (motion, ambient light detection, dimming control, light ring control, etc.) in Home Assistant? To be clear, we are talking about these (https://www.cbyge.com/pages/pdp-smart-switch) correct?

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Man that C-Reach is expensive… I’ll just buy new light bulbs at that point :frowning:.

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I have ONE C by GE switch, I like these becuase they do not require a neautral wire, and dont require a seprate hub to work (At least, for Smart Things). this is the only device I have right now that I was not able to migrate over to home assistant. Im really hoping there will be a way to get them into HA soon so I can replace the rest of my switches.

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I got them working with node-red and alexa nodes

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Hello, I tried your solution. I’m not sure if this is a bug or what, but its not letting my c-reach device be on the same location as my wired switches.

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I’m curious if you used android or IOS to get things working.

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I just started using my first the C by GE switch because they have the no-neutral wire version of the switch and I’ve got a few older style wired switches in my house. The switch works great. I picked up a C-Reach hub and set it up with the app and Hassio found it and added it as a HomeKit controller. But Hassio does not see the switch?

Any thoughts on this?

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Can I ping you for help. I have wifi c by ge bulbs and light switch and just purchased the c reach bridge as per your guide. But I am not able to get the c reach bridge to connect to cync app as it is complaining that I already have a home setup Also the docs are stating the the bridge is only for Bluetooth devices.

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Just an FYI, I had to create a “new” home to add the C-Reach to the app. The CYNC app provided no other option. But, that process was still not successful. I was on a chat with their support team, and they stated there is a known issue with the C-Reach not being able to connect to the CYNC app. Which, of course, ruins the entire purpose of the device. They are “working on it” but do not have an ETA. I tried 50 times over several days to connect with no luck.

EDIT: Just edited for clairty.

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I tried maybe 15 times to get C-Reach to connect to CYNC app and finally gave up and called support. They informed me that the C-Reach only works with bluetooth products, not their WiFi products. Therefore the majority of the bulbs and smart switch i had cannot be added to the C-Reach Bridge. I returned the C-Reach Bridge and am going to replace all of the C by GE products with Zigbee comptabible products. Just got my Moe’s Light Switch today.

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It looks like CYNC has fixed their app. I connected the C-Reach without issue after upgrading the app from the iOS App Store, only to realize that @shak4031 was correct and the WiFi switches I have can not be linked to HomeKit via the C-Reach. The switches work fine physically, and I can control them using Node-RED via Alexa, but it is not always reliable and not quick enough for motion sensing applications.

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I added some MQTT to the reverse engineered “cbyge” project, to get my “GE Cync Direct Connect” lights to work. It works! It’s not exactly fast, but it seems to keep working, at least for a while. There aren’t any instructions written yet, but it’s basically a matter of running somewhere in your network (or on your home assistant server), logging in to your GE account through the interface (if you save the session info it puts in your console after logging in, you can skip this step on subsequent runs), and setting the connection info for your HA MQTT server. Check it out!

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