Alexa Sonos at two houses

I had discovered the disable / reenable to switch between homes and thought I’d come here and find a better solution.  While the multiple Amazon accounts seems plausible, doesn’t that leave you with having to re-enable Alexa skills in both homes?

The easiest way is to have Home-1 with its own Sonos Account and a Family Plan Music Account from Amazon and use one (or more) of the Amazon profiles for this home and then have a separate Sonos Account for Home-2 and use one or more (different) Amazon profiles for this home.

Controller device at Home-1 will need to have the Amazon App logged in with one of the chosen family profiles for that home and the Controller device at Home-2 will need to have the Amazon App logged in with one of the ‘other’ chosen family profiles for that home.

I guess that’s as clear as 'mud', but basically it keeps both Home setup’s entirely separate.

Hi - just to reiterate my earlier reply - four houses all registered to one Sonos account but set up as four different systems using separate routers/ IP addresses.  Created four Amazon accounts (not even with credit card) and use this to pull together smart speakers (sonos) and Smart lighting.. only downside is when visiting each with Amazon Alexa app on a phone, it is only possible to have one account logged in to Alexa at any time… therefore have to log out of Amazon Alexa account of previously visited house and login using the account specific to the current location.

I have the same issue now after buying a beam for my weekend home. Question. Would a solution be setting all the devices up against a single amazon and sonos account at one primary location with the same SSID and password in both locations.Then just relocate the Sonos to the holiday home. Would it then simply just not see the ‘ missing’ devices as offline and play fair? I am away at the minute otherwise I would test and answer my own question.

The issue I would have doing things that way is that you can’t obviously use the same room names in both homes, but more importantly the Sonos API allows remote access outside the network and its therefore possible to start and maybe ‘accidentally’ blast out music at the ‘other’ home (perhaps during early hours) and that could upset neighbours. Music can even be started with Alexa/Google in that way if you accidentally mention the wrong room name… so I would rather separate out the homes completely.

Just my own personal preference.👍

Yes good points well made so thanks - that will teach me to be creative lol

i had the same exact issue. two homes , main with lots of sonos speakers, vacation home with just a beam, didnt want to use my phone to control the music.  solution: setup beam on my phone with my sonos account.  then go in the alexa app sonos skill and disable.  then get wifes phone download alexa app and sonos app.  connect to existing sonos system with the beam, go to alexa app on wife phone sign in with her amazon account and enable sonos skill and it will show both systems now select the vacation home account.  go back to my phone and main house enable skill on my alexa app on my phone and select the main house system.  now the vacation home voice activated music is using my wifes amazon account.  boom

I take it this still hasn’t improved in two years?

So is lack of good multi-home support (Alexa integration, take Move between homes seemlessly, etc) is disappointing for a product line tha targets the higher end.

Other home integrated products (Nest, Apple Home, etc) natively understand the concept of two separate homes on one account - disappointing that the Sonos ecosystem isn’t keeping pace.

Same problem here, no solution so far other than disabling/enabling the skill in the Alexa app everytime I move from one house to the other.

The primary house has older Sonos speakers running on S1, while the secondary house has a Sonos system running on S2.

To answer @Blue three’s question above, I have my system setup in the way you mentionned: one Sonos account for both homes, same SSID and password for WiFi at both homes, and same Alexa account. Unfortunately, it doesn’t solve the problem (could be because I actually have one system on S1 and the other on S2).

Yes, I have everything Ona single App (S2) abs before that S1

Sonos really needs to fix this ASAP. The disable / enable fix was acceptable before the Move and Roam were released. Now that they have products that are specifically designed to jump across WiFi networks, it is unacceptable that their Alexa implementation is not. The oddest part about this bug / capability lacking, is Alexa works fine on the speakers when on a foreign network for everything aside from music control. 

I don't think the problem is Sonos as much as it is Alexa. In my research it appears that Alexa does not understand multiple homes or locations and the general workaround is to name every device uniquely like "beach house kitchen lights" or "main house kitchen lights".

Google home may actually be the answer and I will start to research that further as I understand Google home easily understands different rooms and locations.

I don’t think that’s the really the issue that people are complaining about here, but it is surely a potential issue with a 2 home Alexa setup none the less.  Really, Sonos is designed for a single home, and although you can set it up to work seamlessly between multiple homes, it does take a bit more understanding of how Sonos works, and must be setup in a certain way to get it done.  Adding Alexa or Google integration is just another layer of complexity that needs to be considered to get it setup right.

This issue (and thread) has been open for years now and I’ve yet to see Sonos really engage on this. My understanding of the situation / request is this:

1. People like using Alexa with Sonos, both for controlling the system with voice commands and for accessing the various music sources that can be provided from Amazon.
2. The process for doing this is by enabling Sonos as a skill within the Alexa app which is reasonably straightforward and seems to mostly work well once set up.
3. It appears that quite a number of Sonos users have several different properties (weekend house, vacation property, etc.) with Sonos systems installed, and would like to be able to use Alexa with Sonos in all these locations.
4. The problem as I understand it is that the process of linking Alexa to Sonos seems to be specific to one house / location / Sonos system. Which means that if you go from one house to another, the Alexa integration does not ‘travel’ with you and does not work in the new location.
5. As a result, I believe the user must go back into the Alexa app, disable the Sonos skill, then re-enable the Sonos skill in the new house. And this must be done every time a user goes from one house to another - which is not a great solution.
6. There have been suggestions that one way around this would be to have separate Amazon accounts for each location, but this doesn’t sound like a viable option as people typically have just one Amazon account as they often pay for Prime membership which provides additional music / media services.
7. Instead, it would be great if Sonos users could have the option to set up multiple house locations within the app, and then the app could automatically switch its Alexa link to the right location as appropriate. (Ideally the Sonos app would be smart enough to know where it is / which location, but alternatively users could select their location from a drop-down list - as is done with other home systems like eero or Ring.)

Can someone from the Sonos team please provide an update on this request? Thanks

Yep. It’s odd to have to do this considering you can switch rooms on and off in the same house. However, you need to do this for Alexa rather than Sonos because it gives you location related information e.g local weather forecasts. 

I have a move and a roam at the 2nd property and want to use a single Alexa via the Move. 

Anyways to solve this problem? 

Only by swapping the Sonos Skill to use your other Sonos Household otherwise you need two separate Amazon Accounts, one for each Home. Only one Sonos account however is needed for both.

Some responders say you must have two Sonos Accounts with the Sonos devices in one house on one Sonos account and the Sonos devices at the other house on a second Sonos account. So you say instead you can have the Sonos devices at both houses registered on one Sonos account but have them link to two separate Amazon/Alexa accounts?

It’s not necessary, you can do this with one Sonos Account. On installing the Sonos Skill and agreeing to the sharing agreement you will be invited to select the Sonos Household that you wish to use with the Amazon account, particularly if wanting to use the same Amazon account and swap between them. If you want to use two Amazon accounts and not swap the skill then yes use one Sonos Account and Amazon Account for each Home.  

I’ve just quickly created a separate Sonos Household here, for demo purposes, using the same Sonos account, just to show you the screen you will/should see when linking the Sonos Skill to the relevant Home via the Alexa App - using same Sonos account, you just select which Household/System that you wish to link to. (See screenshot attached).

HTH