I have a number of Sonos speakers, is there anyway to address a 'group' - like "Play relaxing music everywhere". I have tried setting up a group in the Alexa app, but that doesn't work.
While I am here - do the names of the Sonos speakers have to be different to existing 'smart stuff'. I have lights called 'Living Room' and a Sonos called 'Living Room', and that seems to confuse things...
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+1 for playing in more than one room. It would just be nice to be able to say "Play on all" for now.
I have 10 sonos speakers spread throughout my house. Putting them all into one group is not prefered. I tried telling Alexa to play in 'kitchen' and 'office'. It didn't like that. Is there an eta for either adding grouping within Alexa or for adding verbal commands such as 'and' or 'all'?
Group using the Sonos app, then tell Alexa to play to any grouped speaker. The entire group will then play it in sync. You can also group after the fact.
I think that is only assuming that there is just one speaker in each room. To tell you the truth, considering the months and months that this integration has been in the works, grouping of speakers should have been ready, considering how significant it is to Sonos owners.
jimlytton13, as has been noted several times across multiple threads, there are no grouping commands currently available for voice control. However, I believe I recall in the flurry of posts that someone has said it was on the list of things they want to get done, without giving any timelines. This is the normal mode of operation for most software related companies, since it's not a known quantity on how difficult a task is, much less what other priorities may come up that take away the resources that are addressing the issue.
It very much is a known quantity on how difficulat the task is. If people have been so inclined to have an amazon developer account and set up their own app (for free), then the grouping, ungrouping and being able to use spotify has been available for over a year.
Grouping and ungrouping is one of the main purposes of sonos, it is the single most mentioned issue/complaint since the release of this voice control less than 24 hours ago. How did they not see this coming? I would be shocked if it wasn't mentioned in the beta feedback.
There are people right now able to issue grouping and ungrouping commands to their sonos, through an alexa using the amazon platform on their own amazon developer accounts. It is quite astonishing how Amazon and Sonos didn't bother to either look what was currently being done in the community, or chose not to offer functionality that was already being made available by amateur programmers.
Amazn/Sonos - feel free to look at the functionality being offered over a year ago using your own platforms by these people.
https://github.com/rgraciano/echo-sonos
https://github.com/jishi/node-sonos-http-api
Being able to turn on multiple rooms at the same time with Alexa is one of my top 2 hopes for the Alexa/Sonos partnership (along with being able to play my imported playlists).
Sonos has said they are working on grouping, but no more information than that (as is the standard response for the close-to-the-vest Sonos reps). Unfortunately, the mics on the Play:5 Gen 2 are not a far field array, and thus are not suitable for voice control.
I must assume that the people selected for the private beta of this will have fed back, I would certainly have done so had I been part of the beta.
Lack of Spotify and grouping functionality are such glaring omissions I must also assume that either the developers took absolutely no notice at all, or both were purposefully left out in order to satisfy some commercial agreement with Amazon.
The half herated attempt at voice integration may well be the kiss of death for me and both amazon and sonos. Having spent an awful lot of money on six amps, several play ones and a house full of echos and dots if google actually pulls off voice integration and grouping/multi room properly, then I can see me putting an awful lot of kit on ebay and swapping out everything for google hardware.
Either Amazon and Sonos need to actually work together to give the functionality people want, or people will simply just switch to google hardware where there is no cloack and dagger protection of their own music service.
Lack of Spotify and grouping functionality are such glaring omissions I must also assume that either the developers took absolutely no notice at all, or both were purposefully left out in order to satisfy some commercial agreement with Amazon.
The half herated attempt at voice integration may well be the kiss of death for me and both amazon and sonos. Having spent an awful lot of money on six amps, several play ones and a house full of echos and dots if google actually pulls off voice integration and grouping/multi room properly, then I can see me putting an awful lot of kit on ebay and swapping out everything for google hardware.
Either Amazon and Sonos need to actually work together to give the functionality people want, or people will simply just switch to google hardware where there is no cloack and dagger protection of their own music service.
It's best to have the names be different so that Alexa knows which one you mean to target. Otherwise, it might try playing music out of your lights.
Grouping Sonos players using Alexa's voice control isn't available right now, but we'd love to add it in. We're working to add more commands and functionality all the time.
Grouping Sonos players using Alexa's voice control isn't available right now, but we'd love to add it in. We're working to add more commands and functionality all the time.
Of course it should have. Matter of fact, it should be making my breakfast.
Not sure if you're joking or not...but after waiting well over a year, and spending a couple hours trying to make it work, I don't think releasing this skill without grouping is a good strategy. I know, I know, its still in beta...but thats not an excuse.
Of course it should have. Matter of fact, it should be making my breakfast.
Not true! When I did exactly that...Alexa did not recognize any device...
True for me! Doing it right now. What you are doing wrong, I don't know.
Airgetlam
The issue is, my grouped living room speakers are right next to my bar and kitchen, so, ideally, I would create a larger group on the app and play music out of all of them, as I have done for the last several years. But Alexa will not recognize that group. In device discovery, she will still group stereo pairs, but that’s it. When I try to group different rooms as I have done on the app, she won’t do it and will get confused and start malfunctioning, playing music out of the wrong speakers.
Alexa does not recognize groups. However, if you group 3 rooms, say Room 1, 2 and 3 via the Sonos app, and then say "Alexa, play Tom Petty in Room 3", it will play in the entire group.
No, Sonos and Amazon have very different syncing schemes. I would not expect them to be able to be grouped to play in sync.
What you are talking about is completely different than what was being discussed in this thread.
You are playing music in multiple rooms on multiple Echo devices the way Amazon designed them to work. Additionally you have connected one Sonos device to the one who finds your Echo devices via a hardwire. That Sonos device is repeating the input it receives from the wired connection or has to one Echo device and repeating it to the rest of your Sonos devices.
This is not using an Echo device along with the Alexa Skill for Sonos to relay commands from Alexa to your Sonos, without any use of Echo or Sonos wired audio jacks, which is what we were discussing here.
What you are doing has always worked, even prior to the introduction of the Sonos Skill.
You are playing music in multiple rooms on multiple Echo devices the way Amazon designed them to work. Additionally you have connected one Sonos device to the one who finds your Echo devices via a hardwire. That Sonos device is repeating the input it receives from the wired connection or has to one Echo device and repeating it to the rest of your Sonos devices.
This is not using an Echo device along with the Alexa Skill for Sonos to relay commands from Alexa to your Sonos, without any use of Echo or Sonos wired audio jacks, which is what we were discussing here.
What you are doing has always worked, even prior to the introduction of the Sonos Skill.
It works. https://en.community.sonos.com/search/activity/topics?userid=7926722
I don't think there is any technical reason the Sonos One could not operate this way. Only challenge would be some logic to arbitrate situations where it was commanded to do something in Sonos mode and Alexa mode at the same time. Commercially though this does not fit the Sonos vision and I don't see them wanting to do it.
Just to play devils advocate for a moment... - but is the PlayOne a Sonos speaker with an echo dot bolted on top, or is it an echo dot with a Sonos speaker bolted underneath.
Whilst it seems ceratin this is a sonos device with Amazon functionality bolted on (and later functionality with other voice platforms), in theory it would be technically possible for this unit to be built in a way which would allow it to operate in either environment as its native habitat?
That is however very unlikely to ever be the case as it would limit the ability for the device to be used across multiple voice platforms. Customers would have to buy a hardware device specifically for their preferred voice platform, in which case people would just buy the Alexa/Home Assistant instead of Sonos.
Trying to get sonos speakers to sync with alexa speakers is simply not going to happen, certainly not with current hardware imho.
Whilst it seems ceratin this is a sonos device with Amazon functionality bolted on (and later functionality with other voice platforms), in theory it would be technically possible for this unit to be built in a way which would allow it to operate in either environment as its native habitat?
That is however very unlikely to ever be the case as it would limit the ability for the device to be used across multiple voice platforms. Customers would have to buy a hardware device specifically for their preferred voice platform, in which case people would just buy the Alexa/Home Assistant instead of Sonos.
Trying to get sonos speakers to sync with alexa speakers is simply not going to happen, certainly not with current hardware imho.
No, Sonos and Amazon have very different syncing schemes. I would not expect them to be able to be grouped to play in sync.
I disagree, this should be something you or anyone would intuitively think / expect. If i want to buy speakers that have a particular AI integrated i expect them all to talk to each other. If sonos wants to be agnostic truly then supporting a different AI is not the only thing they need to support, but they need to allow the ability to work with every product that has alexa built in which includes all speakers (third parties or by Amazon or Google itself). I will put this on a separate ticket as i think this falls on a different umbrella from this discussion which is simple grouping of sonos with sonos speakers
You disagree that Sonos and Amazon have different syncing schemes?
Uhhhh, ok. :8
I'm currently not having any problems with Alexa confusing my Hue Light Rooms with Sonos Rooms even though they use the same names. i.e I have Living Room Lights and Living Room Sonos Speakers.
No, Sonos and Amazon have very different syncing schemes. I would not expect them to be able to be grouped to play in sync.
I disagree, this should be something you or anyone would intuitively think / expect. If i want to buy speakers that have a particular AI integrated i expect them all to talk to each other. If sonos wants to be agnostic truly then supporting a different AI is not the only thing they need to support, but they need to allow the ability to work with every product that has alexa built in which includes all speakers (third parties or by Amazon or Google itself). I will put this on a separate ticket as i think this falls on a different umbrella from this discussion which is simple grouping of sonos with sonos speakers
Grouping Sonos devices is one of the things listed as not yet available. This is too bad, as having the same thing playing in multiple rooms is (for me) the biggest benefit of Sonos. Currently you can send music to individual Sonos devices but (for me) there was a lag between rooms.
You know, I take everything negative about grouping back. It is in fact easily done in the Sonos app, I was clearly doing something wrong, so who cares if you can’t do it through Alexa? Once grouped, I don’t tend to change grouping configurations anyway. Everything seems to be working great.
Your reply is part correct I think. I have three grouped speakers in my living room, a sub and two play 5s for stereo, and when I ask Alexa to “ play living room” that will indeed work. But when I try to add in speakers from other rooms, Alexa seems incapable...
Been testing this out today and it's pretty cool - but SUCH a shame multi-room's not combining right now with the Alexa devices. This has to be a top priority for me - that and the ability to control my surround sound (playbar + 2 play:1's and a sub) group. I was also hoping hugely that we'd be able to utilise the mic feature on the play:5 to control Alexa too?
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