Sonos and Alexa in two houses

I am somewhat doubtful that Amazon wants to do that. It doesn't gain them a lot more customers since they are probably not targeting customers who have multiple homes. As well, they probably don't want to inadvertently encourage people in different household to share Amazon accounts, cutting them out of some profits.

Amazon's Alexa devices already work from multiple locations, including streaming music from a single Amazon Prime account.

I am somewhat doubtful that Amazon wants to do that. It doesn't gain them a lot more customers since they are probably not targeting customers who have multiple homes. As well, they probably don't want to inadvertently encourage people in different household to share Amazon accounts, cutting them out of some profits.

Amazon's Alexa devices already work from multiple locations, including streaming music from a single Amazon Prime account.

Agreed, but you currently cannot control smart devices in multiple locations, not without resetting skills. Well, I suppose that depends on the particular device and the hubs and protocol it uses. Regardless you still would need to have unique names for the devices.

Do any smart devices work across multiple locations?

rwborree above says he/she has LP-link smart switches that work in four locations, so I'd say yes. If I'm not mistaken, those use wifi (as opposed to ZigBee, zwave, clear connect, etc) and can work with Alexa directly without a hub. A lot of newer smart devices use wifi, so that should be the case for those. However, there are plenty of devices that don't use wifi, and require a local hub in order to be controlled. Alexa talks to your hub which talks to the device.

So if you have two homes and smart devices that require a hub, you would need to have a hub in both locations. I've never tried it (don't have a second house), but I doubt a particular brand of hub would let you operate 2 hubs under the same account. And then, you can't add two smartthings accounts under the same Amazon account (can you?).

Of course, you could get around this by using Smartthings in one home, while using Wink in another, for example. Still though, you can't have the name 'kitchen light' used for both houses as Alexa doesn't know which house you're in as far as smart devices go.

And that was my point really. Amazon could resolve this by setting up a household functionality, allowing you place different devices (including Sonos speakers) in different homes, allowing duplicate names, etc. It would be ideal for those with multiple homes. I'm just not sure Amazon would be motivated to do this. To me anyway, the ability to play Amazon music everywhere with one account is different. The streaming music market has an expectation to be more mobile, and it's a lot more competitive then the smart device market.

The streaming music market has an expectation to be more mobile, and it's a lot more competitive then the smart device market.

With Amazon, Google, and Apple in the voice controlled device market I expect to see a lot of competition in the future.

Well yes, but I wasn't grouping voice devices in with the other smart devices. Also, I expect the competitive features to be sound quality, microphone quality, smart home integration, AI robustness, look and feel of the device, calling features, streaming services, 3rd party skills, app features, brand loyalty....way before ability to control Sonos and other smart devices in multiple homes with one account. Not that it can't be priority number one to some people, I just don't see it high on the list for most people.

Bought 2 Sonos Ones recently - one for main house and one for vacation home - really disappointed that the multi-home scenario is very broken as documented in this thread - I like the Sonos One but I need this scenario to work so thinking of returning both - Sonos folks: are you fixing this?

Well its been 8 months since I first inquired about Sonos/Alexa control in two locations and there's been zero progress - which is really disappointing. I have a number of other home automation apps, such as Indigo, Open Sprinkler, etc., that all allow you to choose which "home" you are in, and then easily jcontrol the device/devices in that particular home. I really do not understand based upon all the input in this forum why the same functionality cannot be added to achieve Alexa control of Sonos speakers in the same way.

BTW in my experience Smartthings itself (without voice control) works brilliantly across two locations each with its own hub - this was all architected into the system and the app - I worked in the software industry for a long time and these are the sort of design points you build into the system from day one as its difficult to re-architect and you always want to your design to last - looks like this was a miss for Sonos. Hoping they can address it.

Sorry if this has already been explained to death, just wanted to clarify before I dropped the money.

I have a current household with Alexa/Beam, I am thinking about getting a One for the office on a different network. If I understand this thread, even if I name the office One something unique, I won't be able to use the same Alexa account to talk/control in both locations seamlessly? I have to make two Alexa accounts and two Sonos accounts?