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How to identify sonos devices in Alexa groups?

  • 17 May 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 518 views
S
It’s great that we can now drop the “Alexa, play in the lounge”, when the instruction is given in the lounge!!

But how do you identify which Sonos device is in which room, using the Alexa app, when the device names listed are different to those displayed in the Sonos app??!!

My Sonos system has changed over time, with speakers being moved from one room to another as my system has grown. As a result, there is a mismatch between the device names I see in my Sonos app (in Settings->Room, which, incidentally, are also different to what I see listed under Setting->About my Sonos System) and what I see listed when I want to add devices to groups using the Alexa app.

How do I resolve this confusion?

For example, the Alexa app lists a Sonos device called “Den”. It’s one of my speakers for sure, but I’ve never called any room the “Den” and vaguely recall this being named by a Sonos engineer on a support call. But a device called “den” is nowhere to be found in my Sonos app!,
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Best answer by StephenTrooper 17 May 2019, 16:44

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4 replies

melvimbe
The easiest policy to follow would be to always update the name in both Sonos and Alexa when you're making a name change. If you haven't been doing that, here's two other ways.

1 - Ask Alexa to "play music in the Den". The speaker that starts playing is Den. If it's now in your bedroom for example, change the name of the speaker in Alexa to 'bedroom'.

2 - Remove the Sonos alexa skill, then re-enable it. You'll then get names in Alexa that match Sonos. You will then have to update Alexa groups the way you want them, so this may be more trouble than it's worth.

If you don't know how to update a device name in the Alexa app, click on the devices tab, then the device you want to edit (for speakers, you'll need to look under 'All Devices'. From the device settings screen, you can change the name of the device.
Danny
S
Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, neither has worked.

  1. If I ask Alexa to play something in the Den, for example (which is listed in the Alexa app as a Sonos player), Alexa tells me “I didn’t find anything called Den that could play music. ....”
  2. i disabled the Sonos skill in the Alexa app, then re-enabled it. I get exactly the same setup as before. However, the fact that the Sonos devices are allocated to the correct rooms, i’m thinking the Sonos systems details must be cached/save somewhere by Alexa, even when the skill is disabled.
Any thoughts? Eg Is there a way to force the Alexa app to refresh the Sonos device settings?
S
So, for anyone else with this issue, I’ve figured out a solution.

  1. in the Alexa app, select then delete each Sonos device.
  2. Still in the Alexa app, select ‘add device’ (the “+” symbol), select speaker followed by Sonos, then scan for devices.
This added my current Sonos set-up to Alexa, removing the naming discrepancies. It was then a simple matter of adding the Sonos devices (some of which are actually Sonos room set-ups with multiple speakers) to Alexa rooms.

Sorted!
melvimbe
That was weird. The only time I've seen Alexa not find a speaker was when it was actually disconnected from my network. Also surprised that Alexa remembered the old names.

Regardless, glad you figured out a solution.
Danny
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