Question

Alexa integration not working with Sonos 5.

  • 5 September 2020
  • 8 replies
  • 780 views
W

Alexa integration was working great with my old Play 5’s. Got a new pair of Sonos 5’s, set them up, they are working fine with S2 controller. I can play music from both Spotify and the Alexa app on the iPad and drive the 5’s. But if I try to play music using voice commands to my Amazon Echo, I get an error “sorry, on kitchen is offline” (Not sure why the message includes “on”). I’ve tried ideas from the forum, including disabling and reeanabling the skill, logging out of apps, deleting and adding the devices in the Alexa App, rebooting absolutely everything, none of that works. Especially odd that playing music from the Alexa App/iPad works, but voice commands to the Echo don’t. Any new ideas? I’ve spent over an hour fiddling with these new speakers and am thoroughly stuck.

 

On the Services & Voice tab of the S2 controller, there are sections “Voice” and “Music & Content”. Under “Music & Content” I see Spotify and other services. The “Voice” section is empty except for “add a service”. After adding the Alexa service, should it be listed there?

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8 replies

J

To answer your last question first, you wouldn't expect anything there - that relates to Sonos speakers with Alexa built in.

Have you given the new speakers unique and new names? Have you :discovered devices'?

W

Hi John B- I have given the new Sonos 5 speakers the name “kitchen” which is unique (for Sonos). I’ve gone through “discover devices” repeatedly.

Didn’t realize that Sonos One has Alexa built in but Sonos 5 doesn’t. In any case I think I’ve been going through the right steps to turn on the Alexa Sonos skill and add the 5’s. But either I’m missing something or hitting a bug.

W

(Tried adding the 5 as an accessory in the iOS HomeKit app in order to drive the 5 via Siri, but that didn’t work either, the add accessory dialog just spins forever.)

J

Homekit has a habit of messing up Sonos speaker names. That may or may not be a factor here.

UKMedia
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

As @John B  suggested in his first post, Alexa works better with unique names across all groups and names. Personally, I use Room Name + Device Type. e.g. Kitchen Sonos, Kitchen Echo Dot, etc.

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)
B
Userlevel 1
Badge

“On kitchen”… what do you say to Alexa, exactly?

W

Happily, I was finally able to get this to work. Discovered that the Alexa app has a way to designate a “preferred speaker” for a room. I chose the Sonos 5’s in the kitchen as the preferred speaker, then playing music on Sonos through the Amazon Echo device started working. 

There are two Kitchen devices listed In the Alexa app, a Nest thermostat and the Sonos speaker pair. Maybe the Echo was trying to play music through the thermostat and failing? I could try fiddling with the naming, but that’s no longer necessary.

Thanks John B, UKMedia, and boogey for helping me work through this. 

W

@boogey To answer your question, I say “Alexa play Drake in kitchen” (for example). She replies “This is Drake from Spotify playing on Kitchen.” If I omit the “in kitchen” part, then Alexa plays music on the Echo device, not Sonos.

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