My Alarm is playing Sonos Chime instead of Tunein Radio Station

Hi @GordonRoof 

Thanks for your post!

Going by your most recent diagnostics, there isn’t much to see that’s a concern - things look pretty clean. However, all rooms have an alarm set for 16:45 - no other alarms. I presume this diagnostic was taken at the end of troubleshooting with the agent? You should not set an alarm on each room - set only one and check Include grouped rooms. You would need to ensure the required rooms are grouped prior to the alarm going off (before you go to bed, for example).

The chime will sound for an alarm when, at that exact moment, the speaker with the alarm cannot receive the stream set to play. This could be for a few reasons, some of them you wouldn’t be able to do anything about - like a server problem. Therefore, success can never be guaranteed. Plus, it only takes the one speaker with the actual alarm set to have a problem, and all the others in the group will have the same problem.

So, my advice is for you to try setting the alarm on a different speaker - if it’s set on Kitchen now, please try setting it on Bedroom 2, check Include grouped rooms and ensure all required rooms are grouped to Bedroom 2 (select Bedroom 2 alone, then group other rooms to it).

If you usually have your alarms independently set on each room, that is likely the cause of the issue - normally, only the Group Coordinator (the room to which other rooms are grouped) would fetch the stream and it would then distribute it across the required rooms. If each room is set to do it independently, then you are asking for a separate stream to be fetched for each room and that’s likely to stretch your network/internet connection beyond the point at which things work reliably. The server could also be refusing to allow that many streams to a single public IP address.

If this doesn’t help, please wait for the issue to reoccur, then immediately submit a support diagnostic and reply here with the confirmation number when convenient. Please provide details such as where the alarm is set. Thanks. 

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. The 16.45 alarm was a test with the agent. The alarms including the tests with the agent were always set on grouped rooms never individual. The agent changed the Group Coordinator from Bed 2 to Kitchen. The alarms are currently set on Kitchen as the group coordinator. It again failed yesterday morning and to stop the chime I had to turn off the Sonos power circuit switch (they are all linked on the same electrical circuit which only has Sonos Units). The app on my phone would not connect to cancel the chime. I sent a diagnostic 767689216 but this was after I restarted the units so not sure how informative it will be. Exactly the same thing happened again this morning. The alarm was set to play LBC from Sonos Radio (someone else had suggested changing to Sonos Radio from Tunein) at 5am on the kitchen plus grouped speakers. Again my phone would not connect to Sonos and neither would my wife’s phone. So I had to reboot all the speakers to cancel the chime. The grouped speakers were used the previous evening as we have classic FM playing on the grouped units for 2 hours on sleep timer each night. This situation is certainly getting worse now and we had many years of exactly the same stations waking us up at exactly the same time each morning without any problems. This recent problem of not being able to connect to turn off the chime is a further extension of the problem.

Hi @GordonRoof 

You are correct - the reboot cleared any useful information. The best time to send the diagnostic, ironically, is when the chime is going which is when you’re unable to connect to the system to silence the alarm or send a diagnostic.

I did notice, however, that none of your Sonos devices are connecting directly to your router, and that you have Sky internet. In my experience, this most likely means that your Sonos system is now connected to the WiFi broadcast repeated by a Sky Q box, and this is known to cause issues. In fact, if your Sonos devices are connecting to the Sky Q box and your phone is connected to the router (or vice-versa, as on the previous diagnostic the speakers were connecting to the router), that would explain exactly why you are unable to connect in the app. If speakers were spread across the two Sky WiFis, this would create grouping problems.

I recommend you connect any one (not the Sub) of your Sonos devices to the router with an ethernet cable, permanently. Ideally, this would be a unit centrally located, in relation to the locations of the other units. This will shift the entire system onto SonosNet - the wired unit broadcasting Sonos-only WiFi and each unit repeating the broadcast to create a mesh, much like your old Bridge did. This is quite likely to fix all the problems you’ve been experiencing. Please keep the wired Sonos unit at least 1m away from the router.

If, after testing, you are happy that things are better, you can then remove the WiFi credentials from your Sonos system. If no speaker “lives” near the router, and SonosNet does help, you can use the fact that you own a Bridge to get a discount on a Boost - just call our sales team. Remember that a long ethernet cable is cheaper than a Boost, however.

I hope this helps.

Yes I do have a Sky Q box. The previous test done with the agent did reveal that 2 No. routers were registered on the Sonos units. We removed the redundant one. I have had a Sky Q box since 2019 and this alarm problem is only recent. I am not sure I still have a bridge as I was told I didn't need it. It would be complicated to hardwire a Sonos Unit to the router, however I could test it with a very long ethernet cable. Would it be worth going back to the old bridge system and can you confirm that this will work with my units? How about if I change my Internet to a different provider which I am considering anyway? Thanks

The Bridge is only compatible with S1, not S2 so it depends what system you are running.

Changing ISP would prevent the Sky Q box acting as a repeater, however, the simpler option is to disable the 2.4GHz band from the Sky Q box. You can go into the Sky Q’s engineer’s menu (highlight Settings, press 0,0,1, then select Settings), go to Network and toggle 2.4 GHz wireless to OFF then click Confirm. If you do this make sure you leave the 5 GHz on so that the boxes can connect to each other. You’ll need to separate  the 2.4 and 5GHz bands so they have different WiFi network names in the router’s settings.

Hi @GordonRoof 

To back up @Mr. T’s reply, as your system is on S2, the old Bridge is not supported. Even if you were on S1, I still wouldn’t recommend its use. Literally all it is now good for is a discount on a Boost - the modern equivalent.

While the advice to deactivate 2.4GHz on your Sky Q box would have helped with some of our older models, the devices you have can all connect to 5GHz, so in this case doing so would not help.

Removing excess WiFi credentials wouldn’t have helped either, as the Sky Q box will repeat the Sky signal - same SSID, same password.

As @Mr. T confirmed, changing ISP would stop the Sky Q from repeating the signal, but I assume wiring a single Sonos device would be easier.

I hope this helps.

Thanks both. How much is a boost and is it guaranteed to work, or do I need to test first with an ethernet cable?

Hi @GordonRoof 

A Boost is £99 and available here: https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/shop/boost. The 30% discount from the Bridge will take that down to a fraction over £69

If you can’t get your 30% discount by logging in to your Sonos account at www.sonos.com/login, then our sales team will be able to help you - just call 0800 0 265 565 from the UK.

Nothing is guaranteed, which is why I would strongly recommend that you at least test it out with a speaker where you would locate a Boost - if that helps, then a Boost will too. Just be sure to keep either 1m away from any sources of interference (like your router or Sky Q box).

OK, that's what I will do. In the meantime, I will set my google clock to do the alarms. Real shame after spending all that money on Sonos products over the years. Thanks

Hi @GordonRoof 

It probably has a lot to do with reboots - if you were to reboot your Q box, all the speakers would immediately jump over to the router, where there’s still a connection to be had. If you were to reboot your router, all the speakers would jump over to the signal from the Q box, which even without an active internet connection, would still be broadcasted. If you reboot the speakers, however, they will log on to whichever signal is stronger at that particular location. Switching your Sky Q box off and on again at the wall will likely clear up issues for a while - until the next reboot of the router or speaker. However, you’d need to make sure your phone wasn’t connected to the Q box either, and the phone is more likely to switch as it is moved around the house.

It’s a real shame that Sky insist on repeating the WiFi signal, but poorly! Your use of a Bridge will have been preventing this issue back when it was in use - we just need to get you back to that configuration.