Harmony Hub Clock Activities

  • 21 March 2017
  • 6 replies
  • 466 views

I created 9 separate activities for the 9 daylight hours from 9 am to 5 pm. Each activity was created for the Harmony Hub using hourly audio files uploaded to Amazon Music and then saved as favorites on the Sonos app. I named each activity and set a start time for each hour and a stop time one minute later. Now I have a quiet meditative Tibetan gong that announces the passing of each daylight hour using my Sonos System.

My problem is that if I am listening to Sonos and the hourly Harmony Activity plays, it ends and does not return to the Sonos music I was listening to. Is there a way to configure the Harmony Activity in such a way that it plays my hourly time chime and then returns to the music that was previously playing or at least restarts the previous music?

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6 replies

Can you use the timer function to set up a function that restarts playing the music a minute after you've done the chime?

i.e. 1PM for 1 minute, play Tibetangong.mp3
1:01PM, play favorite station XX

And just repeat every hour?

I don't think there's anything in the app that allows you to change the source for X time, then return to the previous source, so you'd have to do it using the same "alarm" settings.
That's a good solution. The only downside is that it would lock me in to one source. It is certainly an easy solution. Thanks for that idea.
Well, I tried.

I think as a feature request, it's already been stated, although perhaps in another format, for when the Playbar is done playing the TV, going back to the previous source. But I've only been around these boards for a while, not forever. And making the request makes perfect sense to me. Was just trying to find a workaround, since I suspect it won't be "fixed" or "added" or whatever tomorrow 🙂
Thanks Bruce. I'm going to experiment with your suggestion. At least, as you suggest, it's a work around u till they come up with something better.
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For the Harmony integration, you're telling Harmony to replace the Sonos queue with your selected Favorite (since I'm guessing it's not a radio station). So there's nothing really for Sonos to go back to once it's done playing that favorite "playlist".

Even if you used Sonos' own alarm feature, it works similarly. If you select a playlist as your alarm, it replaces the queue. If you were previously listening to something from the queue, it's been replaced by your alarm sound, so there's no way to go back to it. If you were listening to something in the queue and your alarm is a radio station then the queue won't be replaced... but the radio station is still the default if you were to just press Play/Pause, so you'd need to open the controller and go back to the queue on your own.

But since radio stations don't exist in the queue (though this is something that has been asked for many times), there's no way to return to a radio station you were listening to before an alarm of any kind kicks in.
Thanks Mike. That clarifies the problem for me. Good explanation.