when attempting to find my existing smart devices (govee, aidot, GE, etc.) I do not see anything available. all of my bulbs, motion sensors, alarms, etc. are connected to my home LAN wifi, but HomeAssistant does not seem to see my wifi or any devices. what am i missing?
#newly installed home assistant green not finding existing devices
abstract peak
livid ivy
HA can only discover what is discoverable. Anything you see that is discoverable is offered during that first onboarding phase, and if you add something else later, it would appear as automatically discovered on the Devices & Service page using the Integration's name.
For everything else, the integrations need to be explicitly added using the button on the Devices & Service page in settings, and these often require a little more manually entered information about where this device can be found (host address/ip address, account credentials, etc)
"WiFi" is not an integration with any kind of standard for devices and the features they support, so you'll often need to search more specifically. For example, ESPHome devices use WiFi. A bunch of Tuya based junk uses WiFi. Home Assistant can't see your WiFi itself. But HA is on your local network, and it is assumed that the Wifi network is the same.
Aidot: I'm not sure what that is and it is not listed in the official integrations page. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations?brands=featured
I searched and see it used to be "LINKIND": https://community.home-assistant.io/t/aidot-linkind-bulbs-integration/765212
Looks like there is a custom integration for it. Meaning, no one has submitted an official integration for review into HA Core, but it exists and is not officially supported. There are thousands of unsupported integrations. Many work fine, some can cause issues.
Govee: bluetooth or LAN options, and at least one custom integration option. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations?search=govee So you need to choose based on what you have.
GE: SmartQ maybe? This appears to be a challenge but has some custom integration efforts with limited appliance support. It uses GE's SmartQ cloud API which they (GE) can change any time.
https://github.com/simbaja/ha_gehome
There have also been GE Z-wave devices (Jasco) and those would be added using the Z-wave integration (and a Z-wave controller)
So when in doubt, it's best to first search the integrations page, and if nothing comes up there, search the internet using "<brand name> + home assistant" and see what comes up