Sonos and Samsung SmartThings Future

Resume (after playing something else) is actually pretty damn hard. If its just something from your Music Library then its trivial. If its a specific track from a music service then its a lot more work, but possible. If its a dynamic stream (eg Pandora) then its impossible: the resume will start a totally different track.

This is one place where a couple of new Sonos APIs (eg SaveTrackState/RestoreTrackState) would make life easier for everyone.

Another reasonable use-case is to have an announcement when a door is opened, and to resume playing music/tv audio after the announcement. I've got everything working except the resume, which is the missing piece of the puzzle.

Reasonable use? Why? Nice to see you've got the difficult bit of opening a door working. How about light switches. Turning the heating on. Does it pause when the door is closed? Pull the blinds. Open the blinds. Make tea. Give a shoe shine.

BoredofBalham, I am not sure you made your point, I think you need to come up with some more extreme scenarios and then maybe you can convince me to just give up on it all. Just because you clearly don't subscribe to the smarthome concept, doesn't mean you need to weigh in and discard the opinion of those that do. No, I am not looking for Sonos to "shine my shoes", I am looking for Sonos to communicate activity, which it can and does, and then get back to doing what it was doing, which is clearly hard but hardly unreasonable.

Far from denigrating anything I asked a question. Why is having music play when a door is opened reasonable use?
Your reasonable use case raises what happens after the door is opened and as such things as lights and blinds and heating and alarms are perfectly reasonable use extensions of the action of opening a door using your premise. For a door to open it must close so what then.
There are many suggestion/request that are "reasonable use" but do not address what happens next which given the thought that go into some is quite surprising e.g. Let's have Alexa coice control which raises the "reasonable use" next action - groups, volumes, content, alarms...so everything works flawlessly. I may be lucky, but I suspect not, that my Sonos system has run flawlessly and continues to surprise me.

Getting things to work is always much harder than anyone thinks they are - try the make a cup of tea test, or coffee if prefer. Write down every step required ro make a cup of your preferred drink. Then follow what you have written. Then try again; and again; and again until it works.

I love the idea of home automation but until I can do it from one thing I'm not interested in trying to connect several different bits of kit together offering up a prayer that they will play nicely together and will continue to do so next month. Until a standard, or winner, is declared it's moderate folly. But what do I know.

I have children, my children can open doors. I would like to be aware if my child has gone in the backyard, if I am not in the same room as the child at that moment. ADT would play a sound when that happened. I have replaced ADT with SmartThings and am looking to replicate the same functionality. SmartThings has the ability to monitor doors and trigger an alert. While I can get a siren or some other unit to communicate the alert¹, I can also choose Sonos as an alert destination and have a sound played, or even a text string I include in the action spoken such as "Back door opened". That all works great and as expected, but if we are watching TV, or listening to music, it will not resume what was happening before the alert came through. This is what I would call a passive alert, something we want to be aware of, but don't necessarily need to take action on. This is where some sort of resume functionality would be handy².

This is all I essentially said, but I made the mistake of characterizing it as a "reasonable" use-case, which was only fodder for a troll such as yourself whom has nothing constructive to add to the conversation. Argue the merits of my use-case all you want, but other people have commented on this thread about use-cases they are trying to address and how they too are stymied by the lack of the ability to resume whatever was playing previously. We have all identified it is functionality that doesn't exist, and would be nice to have. This is a public forum for which people can ask questions, provide feedback, and share ideas. Maybe it could lead to something from Sonos, probably not, but it can be a constructive conversation.

¹ If you could have commands sent back to Alexa, I would go that route, but that is not an option at this time.
² Doesn't mean it has to pick up where it left off, just looking for Sonos to switch back to the original source input.

You need to understand that should someone have a different opinion to yourself, especially when not blessed with the gift of being able to read your mind, is not a troll, and it is a shame that you think so.

On home automation would I be correct in that you already changed your system, from the last best very short lived thing, to the new next best thing.
The fact that a door is open still leaves what happens when that door is shut. Once open it is open and you are none the wiser about events subsequent to that being open. How is that alarm reset? (Locks work magnificently well without having to overthink anything or a simple proximity trigger, or alerts to all devices)

Indeed I am having a constructive conversation. That it does not agree with you and introduces properties that you may, or not, have thought of is the basis of a discussion.
That you have already changed your automation system would answer your question as to why Sonos does not support nor include things that have no proven longevity. Meanwhile, Sonos goes on just plain old working.

Please, do the make a cup of tea test to prove to yourself why simple things are very difficult. I thoroughly recommend this test as you will be able to program all your domestic wishes far more efficiently and effectively and force lateral thinking.

The use cases come under what I have said. That more than one person says the same thing does not make that thing valid nor easier. That a change ofmsystem for you has diminished effectiveness in an area for you, but no doubt increased it in others, very ably emphasises the futility (IMO) of home automation at present beyond the novelty of it and adopting something that may, or likely not, work in the future with smarter devices.

Devices will get smarter. To sell, those devices will either have to be multi-system compatible or hope their propriety system wins the day. Only time will tell. Would you spend money supporting smoke and mirrors?

There is a fundamental misunderstanding about Sonos in the belief that it works like other things that perform the same basic function. It doesn't. That's why it's still around and works flawlessly (for me anyway)

So is any requested "use" actually "reasonable".

1. You show why Alexa will not work. Wishing it might do something doesn't work. It may be a change from the last best thing to the next best thing. And the next Sonos bashing club.

Criminy, I am not even going to waste my time reading your response. Peace out.

You ask for an explanation then do not afford the courtesy to read it. How rude.

Well that escalated quickly.