Power consumption - Power off / Deep Standby Request

Overall we need better environmental accounting data for everything. There are environmental costs for all products from mining the ore, manufacturing, distribution to the user, use during the product’s life, then final disposal. Currently, it is almost impossible to make intelligent choices.

The instant of power-up is one of the most stressful events in a unit’s life. After a certain number of cycles the unit will fail. Implied with the power-up is a temperature cycle, starting at ambient, rising to operating temperature, then back down to ambient after power-down. Deeper temperature cycles are more stressful. Power-up for months or years is a single cycle.

Don't expect a manufacturer to publish any data about this. My strategy for all electronics has been to power-up when needed and keep the unit powered for the remainder of the day, rather than cycling as I move from room to room. This minimizes the number of cycles. Over the years this has served me well.

Technology marches forward. Functions that were at the edge of imagination a few years ago are now a given.

Consider the original IBM PC with it’s 4.77 MHz processor, 160K floppy drive, 64KB RAM, and simple serial port -- costing a few thousand dollars. Compare this to a $15.00 Raspberry Pi Zero. True, you need to add a cheap power supply for the Pi and the PC was bundled with a case, monitor and keyboard, but many of us now have these things in our junk box. 

But, that expensive PC is virtually useless at this point. Sadly, that PLAY:5 will fade into memory at some point. Yes, I know that a few audio systems from the 70’s and maybe older have survived (the units that have not survived are cluttering our landfills), but where is their HDMI port and network connection? Do they have a remote control?

We have put switches on some Sonos and power down any that aren’t going to be used for a week or more.

We used a dumb switch that uses no power and needs no outside connectivity to work. We plug our surge suppressors into the switch then the switch to the wall.

The CR-100 was dropped from support many years ago and Sonos gave some users a credit.

A few users blocked updates to their Sonos so they could stay onb the last version of the firmware that supported them.

My spouse has refused to use our Sonos since her beloved CR-100s went away and has been quite resistant to me getting new Sonos toys ever since.

Well, Sonos doesn’t support cutting the power to Sonos devices on a regular basis, so it’s hard to imagine that they would add a feature that encourages using the devices this way.  

I haven’t checked out the details recently, and could be misremembering, but Sonos has worked on lowering the standby power consumption in their more recent models.  I think this is how they chose to address the concern.

Thanks for this.  I’ll just say I was trying to conserve power by not looking this up myself, rather than laziness.  

@buzz. For sure it has implications, just looks easy from my simple user perspective. Maybe worthwhile a consideration. As said, I solved it for me with IFTTT which is not working too well unfortunately. I thought about a raspberry PI with home automation. Supposed to work well with Sonos, but It’s another “permanent-on” device while I’m trying to minimize consumption.

Sure, as you add more management devices that consume power, you need to consider the overall payback. Specifically with the PI, maybe it doesn’t need to be always ON. You might only need it to make configuration changes. It might require some physical work, but controlling power relays wired to a central point (the PI) would probably reduce total power requirements vs distributed smart switches. Lookup “latching relay’.

Agree,  the ‘product’ is more than the physical device. A ‘smart’ interconnected device (eg Sonos speaker) will consume power when idle in the home, that can be measured and quoted in specification. But what about the power consumed on the home network infrastructure (routers, WiFi, etc) to support that device, and then the ISP/Mobile network, Internet, and data centres that are providing the ‘service(s)’ that device uses.

So a smart device is quoted as using 1w when idle, that is just the energy consumed on the device itself, not the total energy consumed.

Edit: I found an interesting whitepaper, it discusses some of the above:

https://ctprodstorageaccountp.blob.core.windows.net/prod-drupal-files/documents/resource/public/Carbon-impact-of-video-streaming.pdf

I suspect there is a constant frisson in the engineering department and other parts of Sonos with regards to how ‘robust’ parts need to be. In order to make sales, the pressure would be to keep prices down, and use less expensive components. Pennies matter when you’re dealing with volume production.
 

Engineering, of course, wants the best, so the device stands up to the rigors of time, power cycles, etc. And I suspect there’s always learning to be done. I wouldn’t have thought that the BRIDGE’s power supply to have been as significant source of failure, for instance. Or the lack of memory in the CR100/200 remotes…

@Airgetlam, I had to google CR100/100. I was not aware of any remotes all those years. :) I use phone and Ipad. Has it been discarded, not available in the store?

Other then a couple of setup issues, I’ve never experienced serious problems with sonos itself. More Issues with IFTTT for Sonos recently. Not very stable. My perception of Sonos always has been high end quality, for a serious price though. I’d support the engeneers. I’d rather pay more for the best quality, including low power technology. Saves money anyway in the long run.

I think there were several issues with the CRx00 line of remotes. Battery issues, screen (LCD) issues, memory size and CPU speed issues, such that any that still remain are stuck on S1. They certainly haven’t been sold by Sonos for a long time. 

I’ll admit I never felt the need to own one, it was always more convenient to use my iPhone.