Question

Play One and Alexa getting crazy

  • 6 December 2017
  • 18 replies
  • 605 views

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Hi everyone,

I've bought a sonos one 2 months ago and set it up with Alexa. Everything was working fine till a week ago.
I bought 2 play 5 and adding them to the sonos skill. For that I had to reinstall my wifi. So I basically deleted everything out of Sonos and did a hard reset on the one as well and then added each speaker to the new wifi. Set it back up with Alexa.

Long story short: the one is located in the bedroom. Play 5's in family room. Asking Alexa to play in family room works like a charm. However asking Alexa on the Sonos to do something seems impossible. If I look into the Alexa app I see Bedroom in skills, in settings I see bedroom (and below it says online) and then bedroom sonos.
Before I only had 1 (which was bedroom with online below) and that worked. If I say play in bedroom, mmm to do that enable skill. When I say play music in bedroom sonos it does it. Changing the name to bedroom or anything else will cause Alexa on Sonos to say I'm having trouble connecting right now please try again later.

I've tried everything, resetting the sonos speaker again, deleting the apps and reinstalling the apps, forgetting all skills and enabling them again, deleting all smart home devices and adding them again,...
No matter what I do I keep getting 2 devices in settings in the Alexa app. 1 bedroom which says online but can only answer questions and not play music and bedroom sonos which can only play music and not answer any Alexa questions.

In the sonos app I only see bedroom and family room...

Can anyone help me or does anyone else have the same problem?

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18 replies

Userlevel 7
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Hi

The Sonos One is setup to show two devices within Settings, One for the Player and one for the Alexa device, so this is normal and nothing to worry about.

Can you please open the Alexa App>Smart Home>Devices and check if you have any duplicate Device Names? (I would recommend that you use the naming convention Room Name + Device Type. e.g Kitchen Sonos, Kitchen Echo Dot, etc.)

Every time that you change a device name, you must select Alexa App>Smart Home>Devices>Discover to update Alexa to the change. (If you see old names in the Device list, you will need to use the PC version (https://alexa.amazon.co.uk or .com)
and select Smart Home>Devices>Forget All. (Note: This command is not available within the Android or iOS apps)

Let me know if this works, if you still have problems then I suggest that you follow the steps I've listed within the answer to this post: https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/sonos-one-not-responding-to-alexa-comands-6793239

Edit: Can you also check that there is a small white round light just below the mic on the top of the Sonos One? If not then please switch the mic on by touching the mic symbol and retest.
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Hi

Well this doesn’t work. Whenever I set it up and change the name of the device (even after discover devices which always comes up I haven’t found anything new) it Goes bonkers. Every 2 to 3 hours I have to setup the Alexa speech again in the Sonos app. And everytime again I hear after an hour or even less I’m sorry I’m having troubles connecting at this moment.
So it’s clearly something wrong with either the speaker or the app
Userlevel 7
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There was a Spotify outage on playlist yesterday, is this the service that you were attempting to use?
https://en.community.sonos.com/music-services-and-sources-228994/spotify-connection-6795783/index1.html#post16176028

The other thing to investigate is connection issues. Are you using Wi-Fi or have you got any player wired via an Ethernet cable?
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Hi

WiFi or cabled doesn’t make a difference. Tried both of them.
The fact that 2 names come into Alexa as devices is not really an issue for me. What the problem is is that Sonos considers the device as ‘bedroom’ and Alexa makes this ‘bedroom’ and bedroom Sonos. If I then say play music on bedroom Alexa says it doesn’t recognise the device. Has to be bedroom Sonos. However with the other Sonos speakers the name stays as it is in Sonos so it’s really this one device.
Trying to change the name in either Alexa or Sonos results in Alexa no longer working on the speaker.
Strange thing is that it used to work perfectly and after, I think an update, it no longer does.
Userlevel 7
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Hi

WiFi or cabled doesn’t make a difference. Tried both of them.
The fact that 2 names come into Alexa as devices is not really an issue for me. What the problem is is that Sonos considers the device as ‘bedroom’ and Alexa makes this ‘bedroom’ and bedroom Sonos. If I then say play music on bedroom Alexa says it doesn’t recognise the device. Has to be bedroom Sonos. However with the other Sonos speakers the name stays as it is in Sonos so it’s really this one device.
Trying to change the name in either Alexa or Sonos results in Alexa no longer working on the speaker.
Strange thing is that it used to work perfectly and after, I think an update, it no longer does.


Sorry mis-understood. The name Alexa will respond to is the one listed within Smart Home>Devices. I personally name my generic smart home devices as Room Name + Device Type e.g. Kitchen Sonos, Kitchen Echo Dot This removes the possibility of duplicate names across devices. Alexa shouldn't 'change' the name it should just display the name defined within the Sonos App. (Note: Study is a Connect and not a player)



Does your set-up show different names?
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Bedroom and bedroom Sonos.
In the Sonos app the room is Sonos. Alexa takes over bedroom but makes he speaker bedroom Sonos.
Asking her to play in bedroom doesn’t work. Only when specifying bedroom Sonos.
Changing the name results in Alexa no longer working.
Nothing else is called bedroom in Alexa.
Family room for example is a play 5 speaker. This name is the same both in Sonos as in Alexa app

Userlevel 7
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Is this under Settings or Smart Home?
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Settings shows both. Smart home only shows bedroom.
Userlevel 7
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Settings shows both. Smart home only shows bedroom.

And what is the name within Smart Home? (This is the one that Alexa will listen for)

Edit: I really need to read your reply first!
Userlevel 7
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Do you have any other device called Bedroom within Smart Home? e.g. Echo dot?
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No nothing is named the same. Checked it a couple of times 🙂
Userlevel 7
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No nothing is named the same. Checked it a couple of times :)

This is weird 🙂 Can you try one more thing:

Use the PC app https://alexa.amazon.co.uk or .com and select Smart Home>Devices>Forget all and then Discover. (Command only available on PC, not Android or iOS)
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Have done all that as well 2 days ago.
Forget all. Same names came back again afterwards. Even deleted the Sonos player from Sonos app hard reset and tried it again. Same issue
Userlevel 7
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Just to check what syntax are you using with the Sonos One that is causing the problem?
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It’s the word bedroom that gives the error. Bedroom Sonos starts playing music.
Changing the word to anything also causes Alexa to stop completely.
No issues with the same syntax on play 5
Userlevel 7
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Can you submit a diagnostic and post the number here?
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Will do so tomorrow evening. Out of town at the moment 🙂
Userlevel 7
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Just a thought - Can you select Alexa App>Settings>Bedroom and check that the device location is set-up correctly? Please also check Bedroom Sonos as well and then run discover again.