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Drop in on Alexa

  • 19 December 2018
  • 56 replies
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I have the sonos play 1 with Alexa and wanted to use the drop in feature to call the echo dots around the house but can't seem to find this on the menu for the sonos has anyone got this working or is it not available if so will it be added to an update soon?
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Best answer by Keith N 19 December 2018, 23:29

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56 replies

I actually purchased two One SL's and returned them to purchase then One's with Alexa for the sole purpose of having the integration for drop in and announcements as our house is spread out. Such sham! They need to correct this ASAP or stop advertising as full Alexa integration.

 

I’ve personally never seen where they advertised the Sonos One as having a “full Alexa integration”.  Could you post a link to that claim?  

I agree. This was a huge disappointment. All the marketing online as well as in a well known national electronic store   If the device is limited you should make that clear ! I use my drop in feature from my phone to my child when he is grounded from his phone even. So when I purchased the Sonos one I expected it to perform for a smart device (echo) as well as a smart speaker. So who ever is having the power struggle between the two companies. Both of you need to pull your heads out of your asses before the consumer finds an attorney that will take you both on for false advertising. Both of you are profiting! 

I agree. This was a huge disappointment. All the marketing online as well as in a well known national electronic store   If the device is limited you should make that clear ! I use my drop in feature from my phone to my child when he is grounded from his phone even. So when I purchased the Sonos one I expected it to perform for a smart device (echo) as well as a smart speaker. So who ever is having the power struggle between the two companies. Both of you need to pull your heads out of your asses before the consumer finds an attorney that will take you both on for false advertising. Both of you are profiting! 

Alexa Drop In feature missing :-(

Won't buy any other Sonos as planned before Alexa Drop In us included...!

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I have the sonos play 1 with Alexa and wanted to use the drop in feature to call the echo dots around the house but can't seem to find this on the menu for the sonos has anyone got this working or is it not available if so will it be added to an update soon?

Did you forward this request to the dev team,  really? One year ago,  and no update… please do again...

 

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Please can someone from Sonos please provide an update on this? The lack of this functionality is disappointing and am seriously retuconsidering my recently purchased Sonos and ditching the brand completely!

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Please can someone from Sonos please provide an update on this? The lack of this functionality is disappointing and am seriously retuconsidering my recently purchased Sonos and ditching the brand completely!

Hi  Demus, the message above from Keith is still accurate. We’ll make sure the team knows people are still asking for this feature, but there’s no update or news to share right now.

Sonos at $199 competing with other smart speakers .... you must have calling and drop in...please add me to the list 

Yes, please implement full Alexa support including Drop In.

If the speaker has Alexa why doesn't the Alexa inside the sonos work like all alexas?  Don't put Alexa in the damn speaker if it's Alexa handicapped.  Drop in is a basic feature on any Alexa!  Fix this phuck up!  Boneheaded move sonos.  Fire the assholes responsible for not fixing this asap!!!  Just go buy the Alexa bigger speaker sounds as good or better than the Sonos speaker anyway and Alexa works properly in it.  Really stupid mistake.  Do your R and D next time.

I’ll chime in on this one too, have used a mix of amazon & Sonos products round the house and its very limiting that you can only use some features in certain rooms. As a layman it seems hard to understand how features that are included in a small cheap echo dot can’t be replicated in Sonos hardware. 

I have long had a Sonos 5 and Playbar and Playbase. Recently bought a Move. We have an Amazon Echo in my daughter’s room and the Drop In feature is pretty valuable.

Need the Drop In feature in the Sonos Move!!!!!!!

I must admit, when I purchased some new Ones plus a beam I thought it was a given that the Alexa drop in feature would be included. Please update so this is available and let us know. It can’t be that hard if a £15 echo dot does the job! 

Wow, very disappointing that drop in is not supported.  This would be an awesome feature and a great reason to buy Sonos speakers for every room.

It’s also disappointing that Sonos has basically ignored this thread for over a year.  Come on Sonos, listen to your customers! 

Hi. Sonos make multiroom audio systems that can be controlled by voice using Alexa or GA. They don't make Echo or Google devices.  And  certainly not a combination of the two.

That is not to say Sonos won't add such a feature. But it does mean that they may be listening to their customers and saying 'sorry, no, not a priority at the moment'.

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Recently Amazon announced a “Drop in everywhere” feature which allows a multi-way conversation across the house. Of course, this isn’t supported on Sonos either. 

Over the years I have gradually replace my Alexa devices with Sonos ones for the sound quality but I really, really miss this feature.

Surely Sonos could let us know whether it is on their roadmap or not?  

Spent some time going round in circles to get drop in working. So apparently it’s not supported on Sonos One. Not impressed as this replaced my first Sonos. In fact very unimpressed. 

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It’s not supported by Amazon.  Alexa enabled 3rd party devices and speakers all seem to have this issue, annoying as it is!

 

@Keith N your response is basically worthless.  Every response to this topic is sending the request to the black hole of “forward this topic along to the team for visibility”.  Sonos is obviously taking a stance where they are choosing not to enable this feature for whatever reason.  Say that.

I looked at the AWS spec for this and it is trivial to enable.  It’s a shame that the Sonos stack isn’t open source.  You guys would have been much better served having the community manage the solution.  You have great hardware/firmware for the money, but your software and UI/UX has always been sorely lacking.

i don’t think you realize how many of us walk away from your solutions because of your deficiencies.  My several thousand dollars just went to a competitor setup because I gave up on you.  Sad…  I liked your products originally.

@Keith N your response is basically worthless.  Every response to this topic is sending the request to the black hole of “forward this topic along to the team for visibility”.  Sonos is obviously taking a stance where they are choosing not to enable this feature for whatever reason.  Say that.

 

 

Keith doesn’t work at Sonos anymore, and hasn’t for sometime.  Regardless, it seems pretty clear that Sonos policy is to never say never on feature requests.

 

I looked at the AWS spec for this and it is trivial to enable.  It’s a shame that the Sonos stack isn’t open source.  You guys would have been much better served having the community manage the solution.  You have great hardware/firmware for the money, but your software and UI/UX has always been sorely lacking.

 

 

Everyone always thinks that whatever change they want can easily be done.  And Sonos is not going to go open source as they surely want to protect their intellectual property and ensure they have full control over the user experience.

 

i don’t think you realize how many of us walk away from your solutions because of your deficiencies.  My several thousand dollars just went to a competitor setup because I gave up on you.  Sad…  I liked your products originally.

 

They have access to lots of marketing data, pretty sure they have a rather good idea of how decisions are impacting the business. It’s my understanding that drop in/calling features are not that widely used by customers.  It’s surely important for Amazon and Google, but likely much further down the priority list for Sonos.  Since Sonos currently can’t seem to produce products as fast as they can sell them, seems like product sales is not the biggest concern right now.

@melvimbe with over 5k replies in this community…  it might be best to just not respond to everything :).  Regarding the change, some of us actually know what it means to do this type of work we request.  This one is easy, I stared at the spec myself with my own eyes.

@melvimbe with over 5k replies in this community…  it might be best to just not respond to everything :).  Regarding the change, some of us actually know what it means to do this type of work we request.  This one is easy, I stared at the spec myself with my own eyes.

Everyone also repeats they are absolutely sure it’s easy, usually by stating their a network engineer or something as proof of their expertise.  None of us have actually seen Sonos code though.

I don’t really think it’s all about the technical coding anyway.  There is the communications licensing to be factored in for every country Sonos would implement this in, testing, and the fact that Sonos likely doesn’t want to be constantly keeping up with every feature Amazon or Google adds to their systems that isn’t music related.  I certainly not against the feature, but since it hasn’t been done in well over a year,  I wouldn’t hold my breath that it’s coming.

If it’s a critical feature for you, and you can’t accept having a separate Sonos speaker and echo product in the same room, then it’s best to look at other products.

:)

Please add me to the list. I have seven Echo devices that I’d love to upgrade to Sonos, but we use the currently unsupported features too much to make the switch without their being enabled.

Just adding that I too would love for the Alexa integration to include all the features.

+1, looking for this functionality as well (even though it’s likely an Amazon restriction). Any sort of roadmap update would be nice though.

 

Thanks!