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BBC Sounds & Alexa not recognising Sonos

  • 29 August 2022
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Hi, I moved house recently and had to set everything up from scratch again. 
 

Everything is now working fine apart from the fact that I cannot for the life of me get Alexa to play anything from BBC Sounds on my sonos speakers. 
I’m using 2 Play 1’s and a Soundbar with two Echo Dots. For the purposes of this particular problem I’m talking about my kitchen Exho Dot and my Kitchen Sonos Play 1.

I can play from Spotify to sonos using alexa commands ‘Alexa play Madonna on Kitchen’. No problem, Madonna plays on my kitchen sonos. 
I can play BBC Sounds content via the sonos app.  
I can play other services fine eg ‘Alexa play Absolute radio on kitchen’. Or

‘Alexa play from Audible on kitchen’.

No problem with any of this. 

But I cannot get alexa to pass a BBC Sounds command through to sonos. 
Command: ‘alexa, ask BBC Sounds to play radio 4 on kitchen’ 

Response: ‘playing the kitchen cabinet from 27th of august 2022’. (This then plays a bbc radio programme called ‘the kitchen cabinet’ on the echo dot instead of on my kitchen sonos.

Command: ‘alexa play radio 4’ 

Response: ‘playing bbc radio 4’ (plays bbc radio 4 on echo dot)

 

Command: ‘alexa ask bbc sounds to play radio 4 on kitchen sonos’ (I’ve also tried ‘sonos kitchen’)

Response: As above - ‘playing the kitchen cabinet from 27th of august 2022’. (This then plays a bbc radio programme called ‘the kitchen cabinet’ on the echo dot instead of on my kitchen sonos.

 

I’ve tried asking it to play on different speakers in different rooms eg if I ask it to play on my bedroom sonos it starts playing a bbc programme called ‘bunk bed’ on the echo dot I’m talking into.

I have disabled & re enabled the BBC Sounds skill in Alexa and I’ve deleted and re-added the BBC Sounds service in the Sonos app.

 

I talked to sonos support about this yesterday but they couldn’t work it out either.

What am I doing wrong?

 

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Best answer by John B 14 October 2022, 10:22

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3 replies

I
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I also have this problem…

 

“Play absolute 80’s in the kitchen” - fine

“Play Radio 2” - works on phone and echo device

“Play Radio 2 in the kitchen” - “Sorry, I can’t find the station you requested”

 

Any help much appreciated.

J

@AM_A .  Hi.  First, you almost certainly did not have to set up from scratch.  It is certainly the case that a  change of WiFi network or router does not make this necessary.  But we are where we are.  I am away from my system at the moment but hopefully I’ll get this right.

I have a similar set up and it works fine.  First, you must have the Sonos skill for Alexa and the BBC Sounds skill for Alexa installed on your Alexa app.  It sounds like you have done that.

You need to associate each of the Echo Dots with a particular speaker using Alexa groups, and stop stating the room name in commands.  My set up (for these purposes) has an Alexa group set up containing the Bedroom Echo Dot, with my Bedroom Sonos Play:5  as the speaker to be used.  Similarly another group for Living Room.  Then I just say to the Bedroom Dot (for example) ‘Alexa, play BBC Radio 4’ and it plays on the Bedroom Play:5.

Hope that helps.

J

By way of explanation (although there is some guesswork here), I suspect that what plays is being handled by the Echo Dot using the BBC Sounds skill, which knows nothing about your Sonos speakers and therefore gets totally confused by a reference to kitchen.  The Alexa grouping just diverts the audio to the associated Sonos speaker.

@imodude .  Absolute 80s plays fine and uses, I would guess, TuneIn, which is how Sonos plays most stations.  This is sufficiently embedded into Sonos to know you want to play on the kitchen Sonos.

The BBC pulled out of TuneIn and is just different because of BBC Sounds.  Your second command doesn’t play on Sonos because (I would guess) you haven’t set up the necessary Alexa group.

Your third command, with your current set up, asks for a station called ‘Radio 2 in the kitchen’.  Unsurprisingly, this isn’t found.

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