Repair ZP120

I have a ZP100 that I think took a power surge, perhaps through the RJ45 port. After that event, the unit would power up, the white light would flash forever & there was no network activity on any of the RJ45 ports. 
 

I recently had another ZP100 go out, so I took the CPU board from that device and swapped it into the first one. I powered it up, RJ45 ports work, it gets an IP and shows up on the Sonos app (as the “donor” ZP, naturally). However, when I go to stream anything (local music or through a service) it tries for a while & then I get a message like “Can’t play this station” from the app. Is there something else I need to do on the player to get it to stream properly?

When you say that you had another “ZP100 go out”, how did that device fail?  If you moved the logic board from that device to the one that had the blown ethernet, perhaps it is broken in another way?

Do other music sources work?  Or does the device alternately flash white/orange?  One easy way to test comms from your phone to the device is just to mute the device from your phone.  If it is receiving messages then the mute light will come on.

I actually don’t know why the donor device stopped working. One day it was just dead, no power/flashing light on reboot. 
 

I don’t know that the donor board is good. But it seems odd that after replacing it into another ZP, which prior to the swap would just flash white mindlessly forever, now appears on the network and does everything up to tuning a stream, it just won’t play it out. 
 

As I mentioned, the device shows up on my app, I can communicate with it via the app (mute/unmute, turn the indicators on/off, rename, select streams, etc.). It just fails to connect to the stream & play anything out. I get the same results if I try to play something from my local music library. 
 

Also of note, if I go to Sonos.com & select “my system” it shows up there as well as “Online”. So I think connectivity is ok.  What I’m wondering is does the ZP “engage” something else when it gets ready to play out?  Does it for instance try to crank up the amp at that point, and if that fails for some reason is this the type of message I would get?

It definitely seems like the logic board you moved is operational, but I have never seen this kind of persistent failure to play.

When you hit ‘play’, the device activates a different power circuit that is used to drive the amplifiers.  This is the 36V circuit.  (this circuit is in standby when the device is not in use to reduce power consumption).  I have seen two common problems… One is that the 36V circuit doesn’t come on like it should, and the other is that the amplifier chips are blown or damaged.  In both of these cases, the device starts to flash white-off-yellow-off, and the volume slider in the app is reduced to about 15% if it was above that level.  Usually there is no sound playing, but within the app the source shows as playing.

Your issue does not seem to be a hardware problem (as you never mentioned the flashing light sequence).

It’s a long shot, but do you have a firewall or blocklist of any sort?  I would think that at least your local sources wouldn’t be affected but perhaps there is some kind of issue connecting to the Sonos servers.

What you should do is contact Sonos.  There is an option inside the app to send a diagnostic to them (they will walk you through when and how to do this), and then they can then diagnose what exactly is going on.

Thanks for the reply, I’ll check the behavior again but I don’t remember the seeing the light sequence or the volume slider moving. 
 

I’m wondering if it has something to do with the MAC(s) in the donor CPU board not being what the rest of the system expects or something (not sure what other parts of “the system” would care outside of the CPU board, though). 
 

In terms of the network, both ZPs had been offline for many days so any ARP caching or other router MAC to IP associations should be aged out at this  point. I guess I can try to auger out my router’s DHCP in case there’s something persistently munged up there. 
 

Will Sonos support even acknowledge the existence of a ZP 100 at this point? :)

The MACs are not an issue (I have moved the boards as you describe multiple times).

Support will still talk to you.  I actually had them help me get a CR200 working less than a year ago, and that device hasn’t been sold for 8 years now.  That required them to remotely log in to the device and provide customized update files, as the device was so out of date that it couldn’t be updated from the main site.  I was very impressed.

Working with Sonos tech support right now, but so far it’s been, “is it on? Move it to WiFi...connect it directly to the router...etc. so not hopeful for a solution from them at this point. 
 

In the meantime, are there test points where I can check for this 36VDC and/or other voltages to see if my amp section is at least attempting to engage when I hit play?

I’ve forgotten where the switching on occurs in the unit.  However, I did have a power board lying around and took some measurements.  You should find 36V between the labelled pins.

Thanks, will check it out!

Hey everybody! It’s been a while.

I just found something that is contrary to something i have said over and over in these forums. I have a AMP (1st gen version) that had the 36V transformer winding return shorted to the 5V winding return. I shorted them like i suggested in many posts in this thread.

The amp functions fine.

What i noticed was that in the time delta between the 36V coming on and the sound starting there was quite a bit of noise. Normally i use these things in noisy environments and i don’t hear that noise at all. But now in my quite home office that noise really bugs me. I removed the short and not only does the unit still function, but the noise is gone.

I am not sure how this thing works without the 36V and the low voltage biases returns tied together, but it does on mine. 

Just my 2 cents.

Man how much does recycle mode suck?!?! LOL