Using grouped speakers for an alarm

When you create the alarm there is a check box to "Include grouped Rooms" so if the room you choose the alarm to sound in is ALREADY grouped with other room(s) AND you select that option the alarm will play in the group.

What you cannot do is create a group in the alarm set-up. This has been a popular request so who knows, it might be possible in the future

Hi Stuart,

If a room was grouped when the alarm was set but is no longer grouped or in a different group when the alarm is triggered, what will be the outcome?

Thanks

It's got nothing to do with how the rooms were grouped when the alarm was set as that could have happened long ago (my alarms are all 3 years old!)

- If the checkbox "Include grouped rooms" is selected then when the alarm sounds the group that the requested speaker in will play. It's all to do with what group is that speaker in the last time the Sonos system played

I couldn’t believe that this feature didn’t exist and tried to set it up for hours when I expanded my Sonos system from one to three rooms. I just assumed it had to be there because surely every multi-room user would want it.
I was so mad and wanted to send all my new speakers back but it is absolutely possible and cannot understand why it is not provided for in the app. I know because I discovered recently that my third-party remote system (Lutron Pico) can do it. It doesn’t seem like you even need a single remote - just the hub. It’s still annoying to have to buy an add-on and program schedules in the accompanying app only to accommodate this essential feature.

You could probably do something with grouping speakers via speakerscenes.com and set an IFTTT trigger to group them at specific time every day.. have it group them like 1 minute before your alarm is set. Then in the alarm settings tell it to include grouped rooms and therefore will always play to all the speakers. Or of course always leave them grouped day before but at least this way if you for some reason ungroup you can group them back.


It looks like with a lot of the Alexa stuff rolling out there are going to be more and more ways for grouping.


I have smartthings smarthome hub and in my house I could set an alarm in smartthings that will play to any speakers I choose as group.

I know these are just work arounds but Sonos has never shown any interest in adjusting their alarms to be able to group.