The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it - ADVANCED APPROACHES

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
February 1, 2020
119 replies
3295 views

A little over a week ago, I started a thread to engage with like minded people here: those that felt the way I did, as explained in my opening post there. That thread was titled: “The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it” and I intended that to be the last thread I open on this site.

A link to that thread:

https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/the-sonos-brexit-and-pragmatic-ways-past-it-6836056

That thread has grown beyond expectations. While everyone on it has contributed to keep it profanity free and largely rant free, with an occasional nudge by @Edward R in that effort, just by virtue of its length, it has become unwieldy as all long threads become. And it has many days to run, because the Sonos Brexit event, and the release of detailed information about it by Sonos, are both at least three months away.

I therefore thought that it made sense to break my promise to myself - No More Threads - and make just this one exception to it, by opening this thread. It is meant to discuss such approaches and options that may be employed by advanced users that are comfortable going well beyond plug and play options in pursuit of ways past this Sonos Brexit with or without incorporating any Sonos product in it. The original thread linked above may then be used for options that probably a majority of Sonos users will be able to employ - the plug and play kind of options towards the same objective. Which are those that employ off the shelf third party devices that are self contained, such as Echo Dots as an example, where the only wiring, if needed, is external - a stereo wire running between Sonos and non Sonos devices. And which do not involve any coding or any attempt to get under the Sonos hood. Or which involve server like devices that need a complex set up to get it to work with Sonos. In brief, something that non geeks - and I am one of those - will be able to cope with, belong to the original thread, while the complex options belong to this thread, as its title suggests.

There is no set in stone dividing line between the two approaches and none is needed. I am sure that community judgement can be relied on to keep the two threads distinct, linked by a common ethos, in a way that both end up being more useful than one thread will be.

I will visit this thread, but here I do not expect to further any discussion forward significantly - that will be beyond my abilities. So, lurking mode here, most if not all of the time. And if I find anything useful here that makes sense to the original thread, I will steal with no compunctions!

So, well before Sonos forks out legacy and modern systems into two, a fork to serve all that will be effected by the Sonos fork.

I apologies for the clunky title, which is an outcome of the original thread being blessed with a clunky one.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

Show previous replies

arcadelt

Enthusiast I

Hardly off-topic. Your original post and this one were both about trying to find pragmatic approaches to dealing with the what you are calling Sonos Brexit. I am merely pointing out that by introducing any Echo or Home device into your setup you are introducing a weak link, because it will not work when the Internet goes down. You have introduced these into your setup.

That will be a problem for some people, including myself (if you want an example why, I’m happy to provide it), and I am just pointing out an issue within the context of the topic why yours is NOT NECESSARILY a pragmatic solution to the declaration of legacy devices for those that do not wish to spend anymore with Sonos, but would like the same outcome.

However, my point appears to not be understood, so I will move on.

K

KumarAuthor

Interesting; what you seem to be suggesting is that my solution that involves Echo devices is not pragmatic because it needs the presence of the internet for the solution to work.

To that, I have no argument to present. For some one that is either unwilling or unable to rely on the availability of the internet, Echo/Google is not a solution, pragmatic or otherwise. Agreed, 100%.

And of course those that want the present outcome of Sonos working in local mode from a NAS to continue, there is really no need for a solution if Sonos is to be believed in what they now say: that if anything in legacy systems will be affected short of hardware failure, it will be streaming services functionality - which such people are not using anyway if they are not relying on the internet, so there isn't a need for any solution.

C

castalla

Local Superstar

Here’s a follow up to my posts about controlling sonos speakers with an O2 Joggler touchscreen.

I’ve now got the US version of the Joggler working - in fact this is actually a Cisco Energy Monitor with front facing internal speakers. Little used so the screen protector film is still in place.

(If only Amazon would implement dlna/upnp for the Echos ….)

It's the courageous bee's knees - all 6 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝. - - - - - Make Sonos Great Again - - - - -

K

KumarAuthor

@castalla : in terms of features and outcomes, how is this different from Echo for streaming/Echo via mymedia for NAS?

C

castalla

Local Superstar

It’s using Logitech to access and stream to devices (includes local library). Echos don’t have upnp/dlna access so they are essentially a closed system.

Here’s a view of Albums and Playlists

It's the courageous bee's knees - all 6 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝. - - - - - Make Sonos Great Again - - - - -

K

KumarAuthor

@castalla ; Yes, but does it survive loss of internet? :laughing:

Seriously though, leaving aside this closed/open system thing, what does it do that Echo+mymedia cannot? Or, in a more elegant way?

The more I use mymedia - which is working fine, to the extent that I think I will treat myself to an Echo Show 8 at the present discounted price - the more I see Raspberry making sense as a small box tucked away in WiFi range, always on via a USB charger so it cannot be pulling a lot of electricity, allowing the Echo Show 5/8 to remain open to streaming from NAS as well as from streaming services with album art. Using the desktop Mac works fine, but is a little clunky to use seeing that it is often left with the lid down when not in use.

C

castalla

Local Superstar

@castalla ; Yes, but does it survive loss of internet? :laughing:

Seriously though, leaving aside this closed/open system thing, what does it do that Echo+mymedia cannot? Or, in a more elegant way?

The more I use mymedia - which is working fine, to the extent that I think I will treat myself to an Echo Show 8 at the present discounted price - the more I see Raspberry making sense as a small box tucked away in WiFi range, always on via a USB charger so it cannot be pulling a lot of electricity, allowing the Echo Show 5/8 to remain open to streaming from NAS as well as from streaming services with album art. Using the desktop Mac works fine, but is a little clunky to use seeing that it is often left with the lid down when not in use.

Because the LMS server and the NAS are on internal network then an internet down won’t affect media library function (in fact my ‘NAS’ is actually just a usb stick on the router - could just as easy be a real NAS). I must admit I don’t use the local music much anymore, but others have pretty complicated setups with fancy tagging, playlists, etc.

Once you ‘crack’ the NAS mount on the pi (which should be straightforward in your case), install the mymedia program, that’s basically it. Switch on and forget. (setting up the Pi does involve using SSH (PuTTy, or mac equivalent) and a bit of typing commands in the Pi terminal.

It's the courageous bee's knees - all 6 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝. - - - - - Make Sonos Great Again - - - - -

K

KumarAuthor

Because the LMS server and the NAS are on internal network then an internet down won’t affect media library function

Just that makes it worth the research to see how this solution gets implemented - any place or link you can point to?

C

castalla

Local Superstar

Sadly, not really … it’s a all scattered over the slimdevices forum.

Essentially, the steps are to get LMS running on a Pi or such - easy once you have a basic Pi setup using an OS called Raspian (a version of Ubuntu/Debian). Once the LMS is running with access to your music library, then additional players can be declared to the system using plugins (one of which is UPnP/DLNA with a setting for Sonos). Everything above that is optional.

It’s just that the basic steps are done via terminal. For LMS, almost all the setups, management is done via the web interface (like mymedia console)

It's the courageous bee's knees - all 6 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝. - - - - - Make Sonos Great Again - - - - -

K

KumarAuthor

What do you use for the display? It is wire connected to something?

Show more replies

Sign up

Login to the community