New to Sonos or Alexa? How to set up

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199 replies

U
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Yes. To clarify, my Dots names are the same as the Sonos, unlike the first person in this thread. Should I add "Dot" to the Dot names? For instance, "Bedroom Dot" for Dot and just "Bedroom" for Sonos?
Yes! They need to have different names :)

EDIT: Also looking at your other replies, you need to make sure you use 'in the Bedroom' or similar for commands like increasing the volume too.

I just tried. Dot says "Living Room isn't responding."
U
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Yes. To clarify, my Dots names are the same as the Sonos, unlike the first person in this thread. Should I add "Dot" to the Dot names? For instance, "Bedroom Dot" for Dot and just "Bedroom" for Sonos?
Yes! They need to have different names :)

EDIT: Also looking at your other replies, you need to make sure you use 'in the Bedroom' or similar for commands like increasing the volume too.

I just tried. Dot says "Living Room isn't responding. However, the Dot responds to play/stop for Sonos - just not volume Si odd."
V
Userlevel 2
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I just tried. Dot says "Living Room isn't responding."
It looks like a few people are having similar problems, there's an active thread about it at the moment.
U
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Great. I am impressed that Alexa/Sonos are trying to integrate. Bugs are expected in Beta. Hopefully in a few weeks/months this will be better. But right now it's pretty useful to use for voice command.
V
Userlevel 2
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Great. I am impressed that Alexa/Sonos are trying to integrate. Bugs are expected in Beta. Hopefully in a few weeks/months this will be better. But right now it's pretty useful to use for voice command.

It might be worth removing the Alexa skill and discovered devices and retrying from scratch. Perhaps there's a bug when renaming devices? Something is cached?
D
Any idea why Spotify isn't working yet? It's the most popular music streaming service. Hopefully, it's added sooner rather than later.
A
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@Ryan

I have 5 play1’s and an alexa device for each.

Scenario,

In my bedroom and master bath I have 2 P1’s I ask alexa to play Kings of Leon. That works perfect, so when I leave the room I say alexa pause or stop.

I then walk to my family room, 1 P1 there, I ask alexa, play some reggae it works perfect, but when I head to sonos app, to check things, the speaker menu says bedroom+bathroom (King’s of Leon *no longer playing) I then select the speaker menu on the bottom, and I can see the bars jumping up and down on my family room speaker, but there is no way of actually navigating to that speaker unless I group some speakers to the family room.

Known issue? Or what do you think?
Hopefully you understand.
C
Userlevel 5
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Any idea why Spotify isn't working yet? It's the most popular music streaming service. Hopefully, it's added sooner rather than later.

Amazon, the owner of the Prime music streaming service, did not enable its primary competitor spotify in this release.....shocker.
jgatie


Amazon, the owner of the Prime music streaming service, did not enable its primary competitor spotify in this release.....shocker.

Good point, except for Spotify has been available as an option to Amazon Music as the default service on Echo/Alexa devices since early 2016. More likely is the interface requires Spotify's help, and getting three parties to get together to wok on software is like the old adage about monkeys and a football.
melvimbe


Amazon, the owner of the Prime music streaming service, did not enable its primary competitor spotify in this release.....shocker.

Good point, except for Spotify has been available as an option to Amazon Music as the default service on Echo/Alexa devices since early 2016. More likely is the interface requires Spotify's help, and getting three parties to get together to wok on software is like the old adage about monkeys and a football.

I don't use Spotify, so I could be off on this, but it seems like there are several differences between Pandora, XM, iheart, and tunein...and Spotify. The first group are all essentially channels, you don't request a particular track or playlist per se. Spotify, you do. As well, you can play Spotify music on Sonos through the Spotify app. You can't play Pandora music on Sonos through the Pandora app. Again, I don't know how everything works with Spotify, but I can see where it could be a little more complex.
Danny
C
Userlevel 5
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Amazon, the owner of the Prime music streaming service, did not enable its primary competitor spotify in this release.....shocker.

Good point, except for Spotify has been available as an option to Amazon Music as the default service on Echo/Alexa devices since early 2016. More likely is the interface requires Spotify's help, and getting three parties to get together to wok on software is like the old adage about monkeys and a football.

Spotify (and local streaming) seems to work fine on the homebrew apps, using just Amazon and Sonos.

https://github.com/rgraciano/echo-sonos
https://github.com/jishi/node-sonos-http-api

So I have to assume there is some commercial arrangement in place between Sonos and Amazon which currently prevents them offering spotify via this release.
jgatie

Spotify (and local streaming) seems to work fine on the homebrew apps, using just Amazon and Sonos.

https://github.com/rgraciano/echo-sonos
https://github.com/jishi/node-sonos-http-api

^^^^And there it is again folks!! Let's count how many times this "home brew app" is pimped today!!


So I have to assume there is some commercial arrangement in place between Sonos and Amazon which currently prevents them offering spotify via this release.

Or maybe Sonos wants to do it without running a server someplace on your network or having to say "tell Sonos" for every command.

But seriously dude, you pimp this stuff more than one of the actual guys who wrote it. jishi is a member here; he's actually a great guy with a lot of knowledge, and even as the author he knows that pimping his stuff in threads where it doesn't belong is seriously gauche behavior.
E
Hello,
Like others, I am super excited to be able to control my Sonos speakers with Alexa!!! I have set it up, linked everything and enabled the skill.
The issue I am having is I can't get Alexa to turn on the group, only specific speakers. I created a device group named 'Sonos' and included all of my speakers in there. None of the speakers have the same name as my Alexa devices. I tried renaming the group 'House' in case naming a group the same thing as a skill was an issue but Alexa still won't "Play Pandora on House". Any help folks can offer on how to utilize device groups with this new skill and/or what I am doing wrong?
Ryan S
Userlevel 7
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@ac921ol, I reached out to you in private message to help. Feel free to respond there.

@Erica_1, We're not using device groups through Alexa at this time. Grouping is done through the Sonos app. For the Alexa skill, you'll want to target any Sonos room name. If you already have a group of rooms created in the Sonos app, just pick any of those players and Alexa will play to them all.
Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.
A
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@Erica,

if speakers are already grouped in the sonos app, and you use Alexa, it will work, if the speakers are not grouped then it will not work, Ryan said a few pages back that they're working on grouping and hopefully sometime down the road, but as of now.

you need to group them in the Sonos app first, then tell alexa, and Alexa is only working on specific speakers right now
E
Ryan S, thank you for replying. I didn't realize the Alexa app wouldn't recognize a device group. Can you help me set up a permanent group in the Sonos app? I couldn't see where to do that. I know I can group speakers while I am listening to music but I didn't realize I could group them permanently.
S
Userlevel 5
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So I have to assume there is some commercial arrangement in place between Sonos and Amazon which currently prevents them offering spotify via this release.

There's no evidence to support that. A more logical understanding would be that Spotify and Sonos already have considerable functionality beyond the "standard" Alexa functions which were delivered in this beta skill. It's more reasonable to assume that they didn't want to deliver a compromised offering, and also not hold off on what's currently available until that enhanced functionality was ready.
S
Finally! Good integration and intuitive.... and works with existing speakers. Thank you. When I saw the announcement for the One - with integrated Alexa, I thought that was the totality of the Alexa integration, which would have been disappointing.
E
Thank you melvimbe for explaining. I've grouped the speakers in my Sonos app and will try to leave them that way. The way I'm doing this is I grouped all the speakers together and then told Alexa to play Pandora in the 'kitchen'. Because they are all grouped together it turns on all of the speakers. Now how do I tell Alexa to turn up the volume? If I tell Alexa to turn up the volume in the kitchen will it actually turn up all the speakers because they are grouped?
jgatie

I agree, I wish it was available too. I also wish the ability to change inputs on the Playbase/bar was out there.

I'll make these two points though. I think local play is the minority. Streaming is how most people in the US consume their music. Additionally, from a technical standpoint it will have been easier to deliver the features in this first release than things not inherently part of Alexa.

A few years back, Sonos released some information they gathered about usage, and online streaming was 93% of the usage on Sonos, with local libraries being the other 7%. It most certainly has risen from that figure by now.
G
I'm another that would like to be able to play from you library as well. I don't use streaming services (just happen to have amazon prime at the moment) but all my music is stored on a NAS drive that I would much rather use.
That said, so far very impressed with how easy it was to set up and use once i had un grouped speakers.
Best tip so far is to set speaker names to be simple so its easier for Alexa
S
Userlevel 1
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Is there a way to test this without having an amazon music account? Currently when I ask it to play to living room the echo listens but does or says nothing. I only have Spotify setup on my echo.
M
Awesome update!
Is there anyway to toggle the ducking feature on/off?
There isn't, I can pass on feedback to the team about it for you. Would you rather it not work at all or just not drop as low? Or something else entirely?

Awesome update!
Is there anyway to toggle the ducking feature on/off?
There isn't, I can pass on feedback to the team about it for you. Would you rather it not work at all or just not drop as low? Or something else entirely?

Ideally it would be cool if it were more granular. If you could set different levels for different speakers or turn it off completely for speakers that would be awesome. It would also be beneficial if you could make it only happen when certain Echo devices are triggered. If I’m listening to my living room Sonos I wouldn’t want it to drop out because my girlfriend asked my Echo in the bedroom what the weather was. Thanks for passing the feedback along!

There needs to be a way to associate 1 or more Sonos zones with each Alexa device for the "ducking" functionality.
We have 11 zones in our house and all 11 zones should not be "paused" anytime you say "Alexa" on any one of the 7 Alexa devices in our house. Or at a minimum be able to disable the feature. Hopefully this is something that can be implemented very soon in the beta as the current "ducking feature" makes this new functionality of controlling with Alexa a nuisance in our configuration. :|
S
Userlevel 5
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But they have released exactly that, a compromised offering that excludes the largest music streaming service on the planet.

Nonsense. You continue to be able to only view this from your standpoint. Just because it doesn't do everything for you does not mean it's "wrong".

They've delivered the first wave of functionality. To deliver Spotify would require they had a half-baked implementation or they delayed the release of what is available. Either suggestion is asinine. The features that are available are logically the easiest to bring to market.

there are only two possible reasons for this functionality being omitted from this release.

More nonsense. Just because you say this doesn't make these "reasons" accurate or even plausible.

im really struggling to see why multi million pound companies cant at least mirror this functionality after a year in development..

Look, no one outside Sonos can say definitively why more features couldn't make it in this beta release. Here's what an intelligent person can discern though. The offering as it stands takes advantage of what appear to be the easiest to implement Alexa functions. The more complex abilities that aren't native to Alexa are not.

You should also know that it wasn't until last month (September) that Amazon delivered major enhancements to their developer tools. Don't be surprised if you see a flood of these releases from companies that were waiting on Amazon to finish their integration.

It's fair to be disappointed that the beta release doesn't offer as many features as you want. It's pointless and immature to concoct unfounded theories about backroom deals and question developer competency though. Particularly when there's logical connections to be made that explain the situation. Sometimes a beta is just a beta.

We have 11 zones in our house and all 11 zones should not be "paused" anytime you say "Alexa" on any one of the 7 Alexa devices in our house.

That's a really good example. I do enjoy the ducking feature, but we've got a lot less kit around, so it wouldn't come up for us so often.
C
Userlevel 5
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So because I hold the opinion that large corporates delivering less functionality than currently available using homebrew is lazy development or commercially driven deliberate omission, i am talking nonsense and cannot be intelligent enough to discern your view.

How utterly condescending.

In your own words you state nobody outside sonos can say why features did or did not make it into the beta, but then go on to make your own reasoning and justifications for those omissions and dismiss anyone elses opinion as "nonsense".
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