Contributor I

New Skill Enables Managing Groups of Sonos Speakers with Alexa

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
September 19, 2018
31 replies
9638 views

I've created the Speaker Groups Alexa skill (https://skills-store.amazon.com/deeplink/dp/B07HGQGT6P?deviceType=app&share&refSuffix=ss_copy) that allows you to group your Sonos speakers together through Alexa! Let me know if you run into any issues with it.

Some example interactions
Change Groups

"Alexa, ask speaker groups to play the living room in the master"
"Alexa, ask speaker groups to stop the master bedroom"

Create Scenes of Speakers
"Alexa, ask speaker groups to create a master group"
"Alexa, ask speaker groups to add the Master Bedroom to the master group"
"Alexa, ask speaker groups to add the Master Bathroom to the master group"
"Alexa, ask speaker groups to group the master speakers" or "Alexa, ask speaker groups to play in the master"

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A

Arhynion

Trending Lyricist I

Neither Google or Alexa allow the playing of locally stored music currently, so Sonos can't either via voice control.

Exactly, which is why we need something like SpeakerGroups. I generally have a long playlist that I like to take with me from room to room, so grouping and ungrouping per voice command would be great.

controlav

Lead Maestro

Neither Google or Alexa allow the playing of locally stored music currently, so Sonos can't either via voice control.

Actually you can, though only US users currently. My "My Speaker" skill gives you voice control over your locally stored Sonos music, and is current in testing in other English-speaking locales. Hope to release it for non-US accounts in about three weeks.

Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.

A

Arhynion

Trending Lyricist I

Neither Google or Alexa allow the playing of locally stored music currently, so Sonos can't either via voice control.

Actually you can, though only US users currently. My "My Speaker" skill gives you voice control over your locally stored Sonos music, and is current in testing in other English-speaking locales. Hope to release it for non-US accounts in about three weeks.

Sounds good. Same offer as above - if you would be willing to go non-English (German/French) I'd be willing to help.

B

Bg573

Enthusiast I

Hello everyone,
Would love this to be in French also.
Let me know if I can help with some translations :)

I second this for German (and to work in France).

Alexa groups aren't really a good option because Alexa can't play the music stored on NAS, which is still 90% of want I want to play. (Or can I just use Alexa to group the Sonoses without having to start to play something from Spotify?)

Neither Google or Alexa allow the playing of locally stored music currently, so Sonos can't either via voice control.

That's not 100% true because you can use the IFTT integration to trigger some of your Sonos favorites via Alexa, and those can include locally stored music. There are quite a few drawbacks, however. It doesn't work for playlists, just favorites that are names of local folders. And you need to define a separate IFTT trigger for each one.

But it's not useless. Our particular default Sonos use case is to shuffle our home library for all-day background music and we can get that via "Alexa, trigger 'Our Music'". We can also use triggers to activate pre-defined volume levels by name; i.e."Alexa, trigger nighttime volume".

S

sir-pinky

Contributor I

Works really well most of the time. In many cases it is not hearing the name of the groups or speakers correctly which only seems to happen on the sonos one.

One thing that I’m missing is to be able to use this in an Alexa routine. I want to group two sonos speakers every morning for my wake up alarm. was super surprised sonos don’t support this in their alarm settings and Alexa can’t seem to help with it either.

B

Bg573

Enthusiast I

Thanks for the skill. I just replaced our older Samsung soundbar with a Beam, and this skill is a decent (if wordy) workaround for the Beam's lack of automatic regrouping after turning off the TV. I just wish that Sonos would step up their game and remove the need for extra skills on top of the official Sonos/Alexa integration.

UKMedia

Thanks for the skill. I just replaced our older Samsung soundbar with a Beam, and this skill is a decent (if wordy) workaround for the Beam's lack of automatic regrouping after turning off the TV. I just wish that Sonos would step up their game and remove the need for extra skills on top of the official Sonos/Alexa integration.

Have you set the preferred speaker within your Alexa Group for the Beam?

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)

B

Bg573

Enthusiast I

Thanks for the skill. I just replaced our older Samsung soundbar with a Beam, and this skill is a decent (if wordy) workaround for the Beam's lack of automatic regrouping after turning off the TV. I just wish that Sonos would step up their game and remove the need for extra skills on top of the official Sonos/Alexa integration.Have you set the preferred speaker within your Alexa Group for the Beam?

I have, but Alexa's grouping ability via "preferred speakers" doesn't do the job for us. I can't get the grouping to occur unless all the speakers in the "preferred" list are currently stopped. If anything is playing on any of them, no grouping occurs. Moreover, making a request on the silent, ungrouped Beam causes music to change in the other rooms while leaving the Beam still silent. And it's not unique to the Beam -- the same thing happens if you manually ungroup a different speaker and then make an Alexa "play" request on it. This behavior might well be intentional, so that one person's request doesn't inadvertently "steal" speakers from another family member's active group. But it's not useful for what we want.

UKMedia

Thanks for the skill. I just replaced our older Samsung soundbar with a Beam, and this skill is a decent (if wordy) workaround for the Beam's lack of automatic regrouping after turning off the TV. I just wish that Sonos would step up their game and remove the need for extra skills on top of the official Sonos/Alexa integration.Have you set the preferred speaker within your Alexa Group for the Beam?I have, but Alexa's grouping ability via "preferred speakers" doesn't do the job for us. I can't get the grouping to occur unless all the speakers in the "preferred" list are currently stopped. If anything is playing on any of them, no grouping occurs. Moreover, making a request on the silent, ungrouped Beam causes music to change in the other rooms while leaving the Beam still silent. And it's not unique to the Beam -- the same thing happens if you manually ungroup a different speaker and then make an Alexa "play" request on it. This behavior might well be intentional, so that one person's request doesn't inadvertently "steal" speakers from another family member's active group. But it's not useful for what we want.

I must admit that I've got in to the habit of stopping music in a sub group before making a request that will enlarge the Group - not ideal I accept. I don't have my Beam connected at present as packing for a house move 😞 but if music is not playing, my preferred speaker settings will add missing players to a reduced Group to create the required Superset.

Do you have TV outputting on the Beam at the time of the request?

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)