Can't connect to Sonos error

Hi @alastair_2 

I’m sorry, but you stated no such thing. One of the worst things I can do is assume something about your network - that can do nothing but lead you down the wrong path. The BT Home Hub 2 is positively antediluvian and I recommend you get in touch with BT and update it. If you meant to say the BT Smart Hub 2, that’s much newer. All free routers are somewhat substandard, however.

It’s important to make sure I understand you correctly here. When you say your old iPhone works, do you mean it gets on to the internet, or it connects to Sonos? The same question in regards to your laptop. 

Getting one device to connect to the internet is a completely different task for a router to perform than getting 5 devices to communicate continuously over local networking. And it has absolutely everything to do with your router.

Right now, I see all four of your Sonos devices online. If you can’t connect to them with any devices running the Sonos app, then there is most likely a network configuration/performance issue.

If some of your apps can connect to Sonos and some can’t then that could be either the network configuration or the device’s. If those devices were connecting to a guest WiFi broadcast by your router, that would definitely cause problems with connecting to Sonos, but you’d still connect to the internet.

In either case, however, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system.

Hi, and again thanks for the reply. 
 

I do apologise, yes I meant it is a BT smart hub2.

in answer to your question, when I say ‘it works’ I mean it can find the Sonos system immediately without any trouble shooting or re booting the wifi. The wifi works fine on all my devices but the two I mentioned never find the Sonos system unless I reboot the router even if it’s currently in use and being controlled by either the laptop or the old iphone. 
 

All the devices connect seamlessly to the wifi / internet. I wouldn’t be posting in this forum if there was an issue with my wifi, I’d be speaking to BT. 
 

I’ll give you an example, I start Sonos S1 with my laptop, choose some music and play on all 4 rooms grouped together, it starts playing and is working like a dream. 
 

I walk into the kitchen, let’s say I want to change volume or skip a track, take out my iPhone load Sonos app and the system can’t be found by that device.  Even though music is playing and if I walk back to the laptop I can change volume of skip no problem.

last night I completely gave up and hard wired one of the play 5s via Ethernet cable to the router now all devices work fine… for now. I expect that’s why you have no trouble seeing it all from your end. 

I guess I will have to live with the fact that one of my speakers needs to be hardwired but it’s not ideal at all. It is sitting in my hallway where I never listen to music. It’s now a ‘£500 enabler’.

I am also having similar problems.

In the last 3 or 4 days I have had problems connecting to Sonos system via the Sonos 1 Controller on both my iPhone and iPad both recently updated to IOS 14.4.2.

It works for part of the day and then when I try to change the radio station or play music it tells me I am not connected. I initially thought it was a problem with Amazon Music but I have now deleted this service from the Sonos  and both the phone and iPad and am still having problems connecting to Sonos system.

Like others I have

1. repeatedly disconnected from the router and that works temporarily,
2. I have rebooted both my phone and iPad and that doesn’t work for any length of time either
3. removed the app from both phone and iPad and reinstalled and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I get a message saying it can’t find the system and when I go through the process of reconnecting to the system by pressing the relevant buttons on one of the speakers it tells me it’s connected only  then it takes me straight back to the screen telling me it can’t find the system.

The router is a BT Smart Hub 2  but no changes have been made to that and we have used it since September 2020 with no problems, it is only the last few days I have encountered problems. 

For some reason my husband is able to use his iPad (also on 14.4.2) to access the system.

I note that there was an update to the Sonos 1 Controller recently and wonder if this could be part of the problem?

Hi @alastair_2 & @Strider47 

We have identified a new occurrence of BT Smart Hub 2 devices now not bridging their 2.4GHz and 5GHz connected devices into one network properly. Please see this post I made on a similar thread, specifically the part in blue:

I would very much like you both to contact our technical support team, confirm and document the issue (so we can better identify it for others in the future), then they will refer you to BT for a resolution. Thanks for your patience!

Hi Cory and thanks again for your speedy reply, it’s nice to know you care!

I will ask my boss for some time off work so I can call tech support then be referred back to BT and call them also. 
 

Bring on the pain! 

Thanks for getting back to me Cory.

I have had a look at the BT website and can see they have some information regarding the Smart Hub2 on there regarding resetting it I will need to read it properly over the weekend.

what I still find strange is that my husband’s iPad has no trouble using the Sonos app  but I will try and contact your technical support tomorrow to see what they say.

Hi @Strider47 

You’re very welcome!

I should reiterate that some may have similar issues/symptoms without this particular bug-or-whatever-it-is actually being the cause, so we very much would like anyone to get in touch with technical support before doing anything drastic to their Sonos systems or networks, or calling BT.

I think I have done all the suggestions - and whilst I thought disabling privacy settings on the iPhone Wi-fi connection worked, it doesn’t. The iPhone still loses connection to the Sonos and again, the only way to reconnect is to reboot the Wi-fi. BUT …. it seems that if I disable privicy settings on the iPhone Wi-fi - sometimes the iPhone finds Sonos. If it doesn’t, if I turn privicy back on again - it generally does locate the Sonos. Clearly this isn’t ideal and there is clearly a problem between an iPhone running iOS 14.4.2 and Sonos - who knows whose “fault” that is but this fudge seems to be working for me now. 
Note. It doesn’t seem to relate to the iPhone model. I have an old iPhone 6 - same thing on that. I’m on an iPhone 11 - same issue. My daughter has an iPhone 12 - same issue. Between Apple and Sonos it would be nice if you could sort this out for your customers - please!

There are a few threads on the BT Community board where other people have been having issues since a firmware update for Smart Hub 2 version 0.26.03.01286. No one has mentioned having problems with Sonos but having problems with connections to other things. Seems the update was end March/beginning April.

I have rung technical support as requested but the only options they could give me appeared to be (1) connecting one speaker by Ethernet which isn’t possible as all speakers are too far from the router or to (2) change the settings on the router to disable the 5Ghz which I really don’t want to do as the chances are it may well slow my internet speed.

The person I spoke to seemed to think that BT were aware of the problem so I may well take a very deep breath and get in touch with BT in the next few days and see what they say but I have a feeling this is going to be batted back and forth between Sonos and BT.