hi all,
is it possible to implement some sort of "parent controls" where speakers can be restricted from being used?
so examples are:
if someone pushes play everywhere and that turns on a speaker in a room where someone is trying to sleep. so maybe some time limits scheduled so that speaker can't be used during night time etc
kids have their own speaker in their room, but only have rights to control that speaker not the whole house. parents have control over the whole system.
disabling play everywhere so other people's music cannot be overridden by someone pushing play everywhere.
locking speakers to a controller. someone is listening to music in a room and only their phone or computer can change the music in that room.
i think there are plenty of uses for setting rights and permissions over sonos speakers and controllers but i can't seem to find any implementation in the sonos app. am i looking in the wrong place or is this not a feature?
thanks
Question
prevent speakers from being used
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While this sort of feature has been requested before, it currently does not exist. Since Sonos doesn’t share their software roadmap with us, we have no idea if they consider it a priority or not.
+2thanks for the reply,
its a shame because it seems like a simple thing to do. considering sonos don't make money from the app, it would be nice if they made it open source, then people could add features. or at least people could develop them and sonos could approve them maybe.
Simple, perhaps. None of us know the code base. Nor do we know if there is spare memory on all the devices in order to hold this extra code. And while it might be an ideal thing for your situation, it may not have the same importance to Sonos, who probably looks at implementation of items that will sell more speakers as a priority.
My best guess - and that is all it is - is that every option on the system / controller adds a bit of complexity. Each one viewed in isolation looks to have a trivial impact, but there is a long. long list of options people have asked for. Also Sonos has always liked to present its offering as 'music instantly anywhere in your home', and it goes against that philosophy if person A gets frustrated because person B has locked something. All controllers can control all players. It's the nature of the beast.
Set up the kids' speakers as separate systems, linked to their own phones/computers.
It would tick a number of the boxes, but wouldn't allow for remote parental control of those speakers unless some spare control devices were kept in a drawer (old phones? cheap Fire tablets?) tied to each of the kids' players.
You'd also no longer be able to group all the players together.
It would tick a number of the boxes, but wouldn't allow for remote parental control of those speakers unless some spare control devices were kept in a drawer (old phones? cheap Fire tablets?) tied to each of the kids' players.
You'd also no longer be able to group all the players together.
+2you make a fair point, though i would imagine that the devices themselves don't need any extra code, the controllers will store which speakers they have access to via mac addresses. or at least that's how i would do it. the speakers already know what groups are set up, so its down to the controller to have access to group and room settings. in the same way the mobile app can change settings but not the desktop one.
but its interesting what you say about implementing things that sell more speakers, because there are plenty of things that would get me buying more speakers, for example:
being able to add multiple speakers to a single room. like one in each corner of the room etc
being able to extend the front stage on the beam with two extra front speakers
full Atmos support
i think some of those have been requested for a while and nothing seems to happen. i get that these things take time, but sonos could decide to report what ideas they are working on, get people hyped. if i knew they were working on front surround support i would probably buy some speakers in preparation, but as i have no idea if that will ever happen i am not going to spend any money until it does.
+2i understand that they have lots of things to work on, but at least some hint that they are working on things would make people feel like sonos listen to their customers.
i used to work in an office where every room had roof speakers driven by sonos amps in a server room, it was great until someone accidently pressed the wrong room or play everywhere and music would start playing in a conference room. being able to mute a room would have been great in that situation. maybe sonos wasn't the best system for an office environment.
+2It would tick a number of the boxes, but wouldn't allow for remote parental control of those speakers unless some spare control devices were kept in a drawer (old phones? cheap Fire tablets?) tied to each of the kids' players.
You'd also no longer be able to group all the players together.
its a nice idea, and actually something i was thinking, for example there is no real need to have all the speakers on the same network if they are not even in the same house (like the garage or workshop etc) but just for the house it would be nice to be able to control everything yet still have an option to lock down some controllers.
but i think your idea of having a different controller is a good one. so the kids have speakers that they don't control, their devices are on a different network so they still get internet. if they want to set music they have to leave the room and go to a tablet on the wall in the living room or something and set some music playing in their room. that could work. obviously it takes away the convenience of the sonos system but yeah...
It would tick a number of the boxes, but wouldn't allow for remote parental control of those speakers unless some spare control devices were kept in a drawer (old phones? cheap Fire tablets?) tied to each of the kids' players.
You'd also no longer be able to group all the players together.
but i think your idea of having a different controller is a good one. so the kids have speakers that they don't control, their devices are on a different network so they still get internet. if they want to set music they have to leave the room and go to a tablet on the wall in the living room or something and set some music playing in their room. that could work. obviously it takes away the convenience of the sonos system but yeah...
I'm not sure you've grasped what I was suggesting.
There's no need to have 'different networks' (in the correct sense) at all. You'd still have a single flat network. It would simply accommodate multiple Sonos systems. (There's sometimes a misconception that you can only have a single Sonos system per subnet. This is not the case.)
Each child could have control of a system comprising their own speaker and their phone's controller. They could therefore control their music in-room as needed. If you also wished to control that speaker remotely you as parents could keep a spare device handy, with a controller registered with that speaker.
The common areas of the house would have another Sonos system, separate from the kids' rooms.
+2It would tick a number of the boxes, but wouldn't allow for remote parental control of those speakers unless some spare control devices were kept in a drawer (old phones? cheap Fire tablets?) tied to each of the kids' players.
You'd also no longer be able to group all the players together.
but i think your idea of having a different controller is a good one. so the kids have speakers that they don't control, their devices are on a different network so they still get internet. if they want to set music they have to leave the room and go to a tablet on the wall in the living room or something and set some music playing in their room. that could work. obviously it takes away the convenience of the sonos system but yeah...
There's no need to have 'different networks' (in the correct sense) at all. You'd still have a single flat network. It would simply accommodate multiple Sonos systems. (There's sometimes a misconception that you can only have a single Sonos system per subnet. This is not the case.)
Each child could have control of a system comprising their own speaker and their phone's controller. They could therefore control their music in-room as needed. If you also wished to control that speaker remotely you as parents could keep a spare device handy, with a controller registered with that speaker.
The common areas of the house would have another Sonos system, separate from the kids' rooms.
ah yeah of course i never thought of that, it would just be a case of adding the speakers to a different account. hmm, interesting idea
No, actually you wouldn't even need a different account. You can have multiple systems on the same network, with the same account email (and hence the same Sonos ID). What distinguishes them is that each system has a unique 'Household ID', because they've been set up separately as 'new systems'. The HHID is a generated string of some 48 characters, and is not usually visible to the user.
+2oh wow ok, so how does one do that then?
You simply factory reset a player, and reset the controller to be used with it. When the controller restarts it will complain that it can't find a system, and will offer to set up a new one.
+2ha ok great, i will consider that as an option! thanks
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