This morning, when I arrived to work I opened up my Google Play tab and started a playlist. After the first song, it stopped with an error saying: "Can't play music on two devices at once." Dang, I must have forgotten the speaker in my bedroom on and did not hear it on the way out.
I am sure that I am not the only one that has had this issue. Apart from being able to solve this issue with the ability to control the system remotely, there are several other reasons why this feature would be great.
1.) Forgot to turn off system before leaving
2.) Left early or gone for vacation but you've not disabled your alarms
3.) You work from home and have to VPN into work, which causes the inability to control Sonos
4.) Remote support, for example, if you are in IT and the front desk has a Sonos but is having a problem (a user error rather than bad hardware)
5.) Sound systems that are in elderly homes, for example, my grandmother that has one and occasionally has some problems.
6.) Having the sound systems in environments that have multiple Wi-Fi connections, e.g. Company-Secured and Company-Guest. Many enterprise networks do not allow these to talk, so you need to swap your Wi-Fi over to control the system. Also, a large majority of companies that have Guest Wi-Fi do not allow communication between devices on that network.
Thinking about the problem, it is simple: controlling your system remotely, like you can with LIFX or Nest is a useful feature. The solution however, is probably quite the undertaking. Seeing as how phones automatically connect to any Sonos system that is on Wi-Fi, it seems that there would be a lot of core changes as well as added security. I think the first three points are the most important and useful. The last three points are examples but may not actually be intended use for Sonos (there are other Enterprise sound systems out there that handle this).
My workaround (since this has happened a few times now) is that I installed Chrome Remote Desktop on my desktop at home. I can remotely log in and open the Sonos app to turn off the system.
Perhaps this feature can be rolled out slowly, i.e. add functionality to stop music first to avoid some issues described above and then have other features rolled out after. Either way, what does everyone think?
