Contributor I

Answered

Sonos Move at friends house

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I wanted to set up my Move speakers at a friend’s house so he could hear how they sound before considering an upgrade. We tried a lot of things and failed. Various error messages which I cannot put into proper context at this point since we tried so many things. Mainly, though, neither of us was able to connect the Move speakers to his system through the Add Product option.

Here’s my scenario:

2 Sonos Move speakers
He has S1 app and some speakers only S1 compatible. I have S2 app.
His app runs on his iPhone, mine on Android (Samsung Galaxy S10)
He has a google mesh network, I have a 5ghz Synology router at my home
My app greyed out the System menu at his house so I was unable to add his network as trusted by me

I was able to see the speakers in my app but it was unable to connect them successfully. At one point in one of our trials it was suggested that I downgrade my app to S1 because of the other speakers present on his network.

At another point the app said it was going to use a temporary Sonos Wifi connection, but it still failed to connect.

My questions:

Are there articles that describe the Sonos connectivity architecture? I’m unclear on where things are actually stored and remembered; such as networks the speakers have connected to, trusted networks, etc. Are these details in the Sonos app? Speaker memory? Sonos cloud?
What are the implications of downgrading app to S1 if I had chosen that?
I had not brought my Ethernet to USB-C connector, nor my power docks. Some articles and messages we found seem to suggest that one or both of these were required. Why would that be necessary? (see first bullet question)

Would love to get some clues here.

-=Rich=-

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buzzAnswer

Grand Maestro

Don’t fuss with downgrading your MOVE’s for this demo. A quick and straightforward method would be to power down your friend’s SONOS units, then attempt to use your SONOS controller to operate your MOVE’s on his network. You’ll be prompted to add his WiFi to your units. Once this is complete you can power up his system and control each system with its usual controller. Avoid adding a unit to either system or setting up a new system. And, don’t Factory Reset anything.

I have an S1 system at work. It took less time for me to enable an S2 unit from home to run at work than to type this reply. When I returned the unit home it informed its mates about the ‘other’ network. Now I can simply take a home unit to the office, apply power, and start playing my usual online music on my unit.

I’ve never tried this but you should be able to connect your Synology to his network without any fuss and play your music on your units. Attempting to allow his system to use your Synology will involve some fuss. For me it would not be worth the trouble for this quickie demo.

After the demo you can just pack your units and take them home. Back at home simply power up. The units will figure things out on their own.

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nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

I stopped reading your post at “his system is S1…”. The Move only runs on S1 if downgraded. By default it is set for S2. Move2 is S2 only.

Edited to correct: Move needs to be downgraded to S1 in order to run there. S1/S2 compatibility here: https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/sonos-s2-compatibility?language=en_US

U

urbatellAuthor

Contributor I

Mine are not Move2 so the downgrade was an option but I was hesitant to downgrade because I don’t understand exactly what would be downgraded and what the implications would be when I got back home where I have the app on an iPad and my wife’s iPhone. As it was, I had no trouble reconnecting at home.

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nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

Mine are not Move2 so the downgrade was an option but I was hesitant to downgrade because I don’t understand exactly what would be downgraded and what the implications would be when I got back home where I have the app on an iPad and my wife’s iPhone. As it was, I had no trouble reconnecting at home.

I don’t think it’s irreversible, but if you didn’t do it, and didn’t change wifi credentials, I’d certainly expect it to reconnect to your S2 system without issue.

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urbatellAuthor

Contributor I

Do you know exactly what is being ‘downgraded’? Is it just the controller app? Or is some capability of the speakers themselves being suppressed?

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nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

As I understand it, the “controller app” is the S1/S2 software on your phone. That’s fundamentally all it is: a controller. You use the controller to tell the speaker what to do - stream music from a particular source, increase volume, etc. The software (firmware?) l on the speaker (together with the processor etc) does the work. That’s what gets “changed” in a S1/S2 change, or in a revision upgrade to the speakers.

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urbatellAuthor

Contributor I

That’s helpful background. Thanks.

Still some unanswered questions in my original post of others want to chime in. But this is helpful.

buzzAnswer

Grand Maestro

Don’t fuss with downgrading your MOVE’s for this demo. A quick and straightforward method would be to power down your friend’s SONOS units, then attempt to use your SONOS controller to operate your MOVE’s on his network. You’ll be prompted to add his WiFi to your units. Once this is complete you can power up his system and control each system with its usual controller. Avoid adding a unit to either system or setting up a new system. And, don’t Factory Reset anything.

I have an S1 system at work. It took less time for me to enable an S2 unit from home to run at work than to type this reply. When I returned the unit home it informed its mates about the ‘other’ network. Now I can simply take a home unit to the office, apply power, and start playing my usual online music on my unit.

I’ve never tried this but you should be able to connect your Synology to his network without any fuss and play your music on your units. Attempting to allow his system to use your Synology will involve some fuss. For me it would not be worth the trouble for this quickie demo.

After the demo you can just pack your units and take them home. Back at home simply power up. The units will figure things out on their own.

U

urbatellAuthor

Contributor I

That sounds very promising! Powering down his units was something we hadn’t tried.

...and factory resets are always my last (i.e. never) resort unless everything is broken. I’ll be leaving my Synology router at home. Life is complicated enough.

buzz

Grand Maestro

Sorry, I misread and was thinking that your Synology was a hard drive. Definitely don’t take your router.

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urbatellAuthor

Contributor I

No worries, buzz. Your strategy makes sense to me (unencumbered by deep knowledge of the Sonos architecture). It’ll be a few days before I can try it again, but I’ll get back to this thread with definitive responses, ‘likes’, ‘best answers’ and more when I try again next week.

-=Rich=-

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