Wi-Fi emissions

Can you make your Sonos have no Wi-Fi signal at all?
My step had has been reading that Wi-FI and EMF are bad for you. so I’m not allowed to buy anything that as a Wi-Fi Signal. Any suggestion?
Well, I'd be surprised if the small levels involved would make a huge difference, but I suppose it depends how paranoid one is.
It is possible to switch off the Sonos wi-fi completely, with all network traffic going via the ethernet port(s), but it's not a supported configuration - so if you have a problem, Sonos won't support you unless you set it back to the default.

How are you going to control it? if you plan on using your phone then THAT will need Wi-Fi of course. The only non-WiFi solution would be a PC/Mac hard-wired to the router.

My step had has been reading that Wi-FI and EMF are bad for you.
If you really believe that, Sonos is the least of your issues if you live in a typical urban environment that is flooded with other people using emitting devices; so while not using Sonos for music, make sure you are covering all these bases as well.

Before you do anything else try to solve the fear issue.

Grab a free WiFi analyzer app for your tablet or phone and show the person with WiFi issues just what is already going on in your area in both the 2.4 and 5 GHz ranges.

Next pull up a cell phone tower map as well as making a note of every cell phone in the home and surrounding homes if you can. A phone in your pocket is giving you a lot more RF than a Sonos on a shelf.

You may not quiet their fear of RF energy but you'll be able to show that Sonos is a very minor contributor to the problem.

You can also cut down on the Sonos RF emissions level by wiring as many speakers as possible to your router while not disabling WiFi internally. Much better option than forcing WiFi off.

Yes, cell phone signals are thousands of times more powerful with respect to RF than WiFi. The British Health Protection Agency says that if a person spends one year in a location with a Wi-Fi hotspot, they will receive the same dose of radio waves as if they had made a 20-minute call on a mobile phone. I tried explaining this to a person who wanted to use 3G to control Sonos in order to "cut down on dangerous WiFi radiation" and I was excoriated for it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6676129.stm

Yep, I have a family member worried about his WiFi killing him but he keeps a cell phone in his pants pocket or screwed to his ear about 18 hours a day.

I just looked and I have about a dozen close 2.4 Ghz Wifi systems plus my two, and a half dozen on 5 GHz plus mine. So me cutting back there won't be helping much.

Then there is our cordless phone setup that has six extensions that is in the 5 GHz range.

And our two cell phones, that are low emitters when we are home because I can see the BIG local cell tower from the back yard.

By the time you have added in all the RF flying around, most of which isn't easily identified without expensive gear your own WiFi isn't a big enough contributor to be significant.

This reminds me of the Odenkirk elder brother in Better Call Saul and his issues with RF with the extreme measures taken to address them. I haven't figured out whether these issues were real or just in his head in the story.

Best not go outside in the sunshine. Far more radiation than your WiFi will ever expose you to.

Better break out the tin foil hats and take every Wifi device and put it in the garbage.

Best not go outside in the sunshine. Far more radiation than your WiFi will ever expose you to.

Better break out the tin foil hats and take every Wifi device and put it in the garbage.


I wish people did more research before spewing comments like these. I happen to have taken an interest to RF and read a few studies and papers on the subject. While the cell phone is immensely more harmful to your health on the long term basis, it is also not always on your head (at least I hope that’s the case for you). I took out a spectrum analyzer and an RF energy meter (I own a lot of sonos) and found out that besides the microwave and the darn cordless phone which I have since taken down, the highest RF emission device in my house are my sonos speakers. They emit 3-4x more proven harmful RF power than my ubiquiti wifi APs at full power. My spectrum analyzer also showed me how much intensity and how wide of a band it is occupying saturating more of the spectrum than any wifi router/AP I know. It convinced me for now to take down Sonosnet and move the sonos to my wifi to reduce the number of emitting devices and reduce the intensity of the signal which would then follow wifi protocol instead of Sonosnet. The spectrum has much lower intensity now but the sonos transmit power is still absurdly high. One can see that also from the unifi controller when you see that a distant sonos still has a very high signal... much higher than some closer devices. My paper search shows that the sonos emits over 500X higher microwave RF than the lowest known power to have caused cancer and several million times what you get from the sun. In order to get get out of this danger range only if you stand at least 6ft or 2m from it. Not all wifi devices are created equal... You get a radiation therapy from the sonos if you are not careful. In comparison, my Xiaomi robot vacuum peaks at 200x less power the sonos emits at the antenna.