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acbrunton
Contributor I
October 10, 2017

Alexa-SONOS-Harmony Issues

  • October 10, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 1186 views
I've had my Harmony hub linked to Alexa as a skill for quite sometime now. All works well for voice commands turning on TV, Receiver, etc. After adding the SONOS skill and discovering my SONOS devices, Alexa is unable to control the volume of the Receiver via the Harmony Hub. The reply is Alexa doesn't recognize that device. The SONOS Connect that is connected to the receiver is set for fixed volume via the Line out. So, the volume has to be controlled via the Harmony Hub and Receiver. Any one else have this type of setup or problem?
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    4 replies

    dave77
    dave77
    Headliner I
    October 11, 2017
    Are you using the blue harmony skill?

    I guess the phrase is the same for Harmony and Sonos if so, I did wonder how this would work, I guess it doesn't.
    dave77
    dave77
    Headliner I
    October 11, 2017
    This is from the Amazon Alexa page for the Harmony Skill. It seems conflicting commands are based on the previous command. So turn up the volume will work for Sonos if the last command was Sonos related, and work for Harmony if the last command was harmony related.

    Remote controls were so much simpler :D

      acbruntonAuthor
      Contributor I
      October 11, 2017
      Thanks for the replies. I have both Harmony skills, Blue and Red. However the Red skill is tagged as inactive. WRT to the command conflict I had issued the command "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn up the volume" The reply was the device was unknown. I have subsequently disabled both the Harmony Blue skill, and SONOS skill and re-enabled them and performed a new device discovery. The skills and commands now function as expected, even back to back. For example, "Alexa, pause the Living Room", Alexa, resume the Living Room", "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn up the volume", Alexa, next song in the Living Room", Alexa, tell Harmony to mute", etc. are working as expected.
        dave77
        dave77
        Headliner I
        October 12, 2017
        If you have Blue and Red Harmony skills installed, Red is disabled as Blue overrides it. in which case "Alexa, tell Harmony......" will not work as that is a Red command.

        So you're now using the Harmony Red skill? That will probably get around naming conflicts as you have to say "tell harmony", the downside is that it's not a 'smart home' skill so you can't group its commands with others, for example, I have an Alexa group called 'downstairs', when I say "Turn off downstairs" then all Hue lights go out and the TV turns off
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