Feature Request - Sonos System Backup Function

I like where this thread going...thanks ​@UKMedia for bringing it up. However, we can’t put the cart before the horse.  The” horse” being Legal. 

Backup’s be they stored in the cloud or locally will contain a certain amount of PII. Even if the EU decides to store the backup locally on their own PC or removable storage Sonos will have a hand in that process and PII will be seen and/or captured to a certain degree.

Apple users like myself have to sign-off that we allow Apple to capture certain types of information as the back-up process is designed and implemented by Apple; be it cloud based or local storage. 

So my point is this.  Before the engineers/coders start to work on what is being proposed (assuming it gets a green light) Legal should be consulted first. Legal needs to determine what liabilities Sonos might be exposed to and draft the appropriate permission documents for the EU to agree upon.

Like it or not good ideas and/or convenience designed for the consumer always demand thorough investigation to forestall potential liabilities. 

Hi ​@AjTrek1 

I think there’s very little chance of us doing something like this without consulting Legal first.

Isn’t permission required for Apple because of AI analysis they do to the photos to tag or categorise them? Not an Apple user, never will be, so I could easily be wrong - just asking.

P.S. I just figured out that EU is End User and not European Union 😂

I agree that storing credentials would be problematic, and that would make backups not very useful for the majority of users. 

I also think restoration would be difficult.  How would it identify what settings belong to which speakers?  By mac address?  Would there need to be some sort of verification that the account owner hasn’t changed between restorations and/or delete backups when selling.?  Even if credentials are not stored, you wouldn’t want current owners favorites and settings to be visible to new owners. 

I would think that a lot of people would want to use this feature to restore previous trueplay settings. Either because they temporarily moved speakers into a new configuration, or where happier with the results from old tuning rather than latest.  That would mean having the ability to restore trueplay only and store multiple, identifiable, backups. 

​@melvimbe 

Hi ​Danny

I think it would have to be stored with the HHID in mind (the system identifier - HouseHold IDentity) but would also reference the serial number of the speaker. This way, if the speaker goes to another system or owner, no backup would be available. When adding a reset speaker to the system it was on previously, the app could simply say, “we found some stored settings for this device - would you like to restore them?” If there is a conflict, like the room name being taken, it could just have a number added - “Kitchen 2”, for example.

It gets complicated when all speakers have been reset, which is key for the purposes of restoring playlists and favourites. This would probably mean that we would have to have the app maintain the HHID after all devices have been reset and allow adding them again without changing it - I am not sure if this is already possible or not. Of course, that would mean if the app were reset as well, all would be lost. It’s conceivable we could allow transfer of the backup from one HHID to another, as long as they are on the same account, though.

Honestly, I think the whole idea is pretty workable, and it is entirely possible that it was already thought of and possibly even one of the reasons for the new app being made in the first place - if this is the case, I am not privy to it, to be clear.

Permission was required long before AI became a thing and the advancements for consumer convenience were developed.!

Glad to know you’re keeping up with identifying acronyms and abbreviations (EU). 😂 In hindsight I violated a cardinal rule to explain an abbreviation before employing it. 

Agree that using the HHID does make sense, and you’re mention of the new app and potential future features makes sense.  In fact, perhaps users wouldn’t need to even request that a backup be created, as settings could automatically be stored without prompting.  As you stated, when a device is setup, it could do a quick call to the cloud to see if there are any previous settings.

Whatever scheme, there should be a capability of restoring a system from scratch. I’m thinking of the case where a fire or flood destroyed all of the system units. The replacement units would need to be able to restore the previous Music services, playlists, and there should be a reasonable way to restore access to a local library.

Should this backup be automatic for all users? If kept offline, who would pay for the resources required? Although not 100% safe from fire or flood, a backup could be stored on the controller device. Potentially, this scheme could survive fire or a flood via routine user backup of the controller device. An issue with this scheme would occur with multiple controllers. Depending on how often the controller used for recovery was active, the backup might be stale.

While not likely to be popular from a marketing standpoint, I can imagine a USB dongle backup scheme.

My brain aches from imagining the amount of code needed to support these ideas, and the cost necessary to implement them. All great ideas, just not as important as parity with the previous app. 

​@buzz wrote the following in BOLD. My best guess/opinion is in BLUE.

Should this backup be automatic for all users?

• I would think not because of PII capture

If kept offline, who would pay for the resources required?

• By offline do you mean by the EU or Sonos storing the data somewhere? If the latter it’s technically not off-line as Sonos has eye’s to it.

Although not 100% safe from fire or flood, a backup could be stored on the controller device.

• That is possible. Although the EU woulds have to agree as internal storage space may be a concern

Potentially, this scheme could survive fire or a flood via routine user backup of the controller device.

• Here again the back-up would ideally be automatic by EU permission to maintain integrity.

An issue with this scheme would occur with multiple controllers.

• Maybe not. Assuming each device has the same OS the backup’s could be identified by a unique system number common to the owner of each device. 

Depending on how often the controller used for recovery was active, the backup might be stale.

• Here is where automatic backup’s would be helpful. If left to manual you are correct a restored back-up might be stale causing additonal issues. I would envision backup’s occurring at a specified time at night; as long as the device is turned on similar to Auto-Updates.

This is all speculation and conjecture at this point. However, I’m sure Sonos could work out the bugs (i.e. potential downsides).  Besides, we don’t want to continually aggravate ​@Airgetlam’s brain 😂

I’d be happy if I could just save local copies of my playlists to the drive on the machine the web controller is running on. Maybe on a phone/tablet from the App if there was enough space.

Looking at my setup that is where almost all my time went in setting things up and would be most missed on restore.