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Conflict between Google Assistant voice control and Remote control?

  • 18 March 2023
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Hi y’all.  I have a new Ray. During setup, I connected my TV’s remote control to Ray to control the volume. Fine and dandy. Later, I connected Google Home Assistant so that I could use voice control functionality. That seems to work fine. But, now, the physical remote seems to have lost control of volume. Does anyone know if there’s a tweak in settings that needs to be made? Or maybe a conflict between Assistant and physical remote that doesn’t allow use of both? Thanks for your insights! 

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Best answer by Ken_Griffiths 19 March 2023, 00:12

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How are you connecting the Google Home Assistant to the TV? …If it’s built into your TV remote, you have ’likely’ switched-off infrared ‘remote’ control of the TV, I suspect, and switched to using wireless/bluetooth control instead and so the Ray volume control has stopped working. The Ray requires infrared signals from the ‘remote’ to control its volume. You would need to switch the remote back to using infrared control of the TV instead.

Some TV (universal) ‘remotes’ will support both bluetooth for TV/Voice control etc. whilst allowing infrared control of connected devices - an example is the ‘Magic Remote’ for LG TV’s via its inbuilt WebOS ‘device connector’ software. So this may depend on the make/model and abilities of your connected TV and it’s remote. The best thing is to maybe speak with your TV manufacturers support desk and see what they suggest to resolve the issue.

Thanks for the helpful suggestions.

I’m pretty sure the issue is not with the remote / IR.  All non-volume functions controlled by the remote work fine. And, just discovered, when I change the TV’s ‘Sound Out’ settings to use the TV’s speakers, I can control volume. Changing ‘Sound Out” back to ‘Optical Out Device’ then drops the remote’s volume control. During initial setup this wasn’t an issue; but became an issue after I linked the Home Assistant.

Google Home Assistant is based in a Google Hub and is connected via a home Wi-Fi network to the Sonos. (The remote is an LG ‘standard’ remote and does not have Google built in.) 

I can control operation (including volume) by voice via Assistant, and also via the Sonos app. But no longer from the TV remote. Regards…

 

Does your LG TV operate on WebOS and if so have you setup the Sonos Ray in its ‘device connector’ - and set "Sonos" as the manufacturer attached to the TV’s optical port? See "example" screenshot from an LG TV ‘connected devices’ settings.

Thanks. I'll look into this when I'm less frustrated. I have WebOS but get error messages when. I try to use the universal connector as shown in the image. What's especially frustrating is that this all worked for 2 or 3 days and now does not. But looks like the issue is on the LG side, not Sonos or Google. That helps me zero in on where to look.