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collinmurphy
Contributor I
October 28, 2015
Question

When is Echo Support coming?

  • October 28, 2015
  • 71 replies
  • 27665 views
Hi Guys,

Let me start off by saying I love you guys. I have a Playbar, Play 5, Play 3, Connect, and am looking to complete my Playbar setup with a couple of Play 1's and a Sub soon.

I also have an Amazon Echo and it is awesome. In fact, it's a bit too awesome and I find myself asking Alexa to play music just because if I want to hear a song, all I have to do is ask; I don't have to bust out my phone. The problem is the speakers on the Echo are mediocre at best. I would much prefer the sound to come out of my Sonos system. With the "internet of things" really starting to take off - integration is going to become more and more important.

Amazon Echo has sort of a plugins-type interface called skills. https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/getting-started-guide
It would be amazing if you guys could create an skill for Sonos. Something like "Alexa, tell Sonos to play *playlist*." or music by _____ or x from pandora.

I've done some searching and this comes up on this forum a lot. I think it's time you started listening to your community. With skills you no longer need much help from Amazon so its on you to keep your customers happy. Please do not start your own voice recognition or anything silly like that. Stick to what you're great at. Just use what is already available and on the markets and integrate with them.

Thanks
-Collin
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      71 replies

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      biffta
      biffta
      Headliner I
      January 16, 2017
      I installed the Yonomi app a couple days ago. I find it to be really limited as far as what it can do with Sonos, but definitely something to look into if you have echo and sonos. It's not going to be all you want, but it's a good stop gap till something better comes along.

      It's someone hard to describe how it works without getting too detailed. It will essentially setup each of your sonos units as a separate smart device that echo can see and command. You are limited to what you can do with the device though. Turn on, turn off, pause, mute, unmute, play a sound. What you cannot do (in this context anyway) is specify what song, playlist or service to play, or group rooms together. obviously, that makes it rather limited.

      However, you can get around the music select limitation by setting up a routine in advance. For example, I set up a routine to specifically play my daughter's playlist on the living room sonos at a specific volume and named it "Samantha". So you can now tell echo "Alexa, turn on Samantha" and it will follow the routine.

      An important factor in this is that Yonomi is not about controlling Sonos only as it can control your other smart home devices as well. So for example, I can add turning off the living room lights to the previously created "Samantha" routine. That's definitely something to consider if Sonos makes it's own skill. It's not just about voice control, but about automation as well.

      One other thing worth repeating is that Yonomi ties your smart phone so it is aware of additional events. For example, Yonomi sets the GPS location of your home, so when you arrive home, it knows this based on the gps and can automatically run a routine. I have set to having the living room sonos say "welcome home", turn on the light, and play Pandora Fleetwood mac station, but only between 8 am and 8 pm. It also is supposed to be able to run a routine when I start a phone call (mute the music) or end a phone call (unmute), but I haven't gotten that to run smoothly yet.

      Be aware though that if you already have a wink or some other hub on your network, and yonomi is going to cause some confusion. Alexa got confused when I asked it to turn off the kitchen light because it thought I had more then 1 of those...one kitchen light on wink, one kitchen light on yonomi. I had to rename to light on yonomi to avoid the confusion.

      So yes, yonomi is definitely worth a try in my opinion, but don't expect it to be the final solution.      I installed the Yonomi app a couple days ago. I find it to be really limited as far as what it can do with Sonos, but definitely something to look into if you have echo and sonos. It's not going to be all you want, but it's a good stop gap till something better comes along.

      It's someone hard to describe how it works without getting too detailed. It will essentially setup each of your sonos units as a separate smart device that echo can see and command. You are limited to what you can do with the device though. Turn on, turn off, pause, mute, unmute, play a sound. What you cannot do (in this context anyway) is specify what song, playlist or service to play, or group rooms together. obviously, that makes it rather limited.

      However, you can get around the music select limitation by setting up a routine in advance. For example, I set up a routine to specifically play my daughter's playlist on the living room sonos at a specific volume and named it "Samantha". So you can now tell echo "Alexa, turn on Samantha" and it will follow the routine.

      An important factor in this is that Yonomi is not about controlling Sonos only as it can control your other smart home devices as well. So for example, I can add turning off the living room lights to the previously created "Samantha" routine. That's definitely something to consider if Sonos makes it's own skill. It's not just about voice control, but about automation as well.

      One other thing worth repeating is that Yonomi ties your smart phone so it is aware of additional events. For example, Yonomi sets the GPS location of your home, so when you arrive home, it knows this based on the gps and can automatically run a routine. I have set to having the living room sonos say "welcome home", turn on the light, and play Pandora Fleetwood mac station, but only between 8 am and 8 pm. It also is supposed to be able to run a routine when I start a phone call (mute the music) or end a phone call (unmute), but I haven't gotten that to run smoothly yet.

      Be aware though that if you already have a wink or some other hub on your network, and yonomi is going to cause some confusion. Alexa got confused when I asked it to turn off the kitchen light because it thought I had more then 1 of those...one kitchen light on wink, one kitchen light on yonomi. I had to rename to light on yonomi to avoid the confusion.

      So yes, yonomi is definitely worth a try in my opinion, but don't expect it to be the final solution.

      Hi there, thanks for the information. Tell me please how did you set up a routine to include a chosen playlist? In "Routines" I only see my saved Sonos favorites.
      Thanks.
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