Replacement CR100?

  • 31 January 2018
  • 81 replies
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Userlevel 7
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What's best to replace the CR100 ?

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81 replies

Userlevel 3
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How about old iPhones without service? I think a v4 will run the controller. Glue it to the wall. $40 on fleabay.

My kids will have exploding brains that an iPhone is only a Sonos controller.
Not an Apple person but from what I read on this forum it looks like Apple makes sure you can't repurpose old hardware beyond a couple of revs.
Userlevel 7
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How about old iPhones without service? I think a v4 will run the controller. Glue it to the wall. $40 on fleabay.

My kids will have exploding brains that an iPhone is only a Sonos controller.
I like the idea of blowing the kids minds, but I think this solution would only have a limited lifespan, from the "Save the CR100" thread:-

"Apparently after July, apple app store will only work with iOS 11.3, so my iphone5 Sonos controller stuck on 10.3 will follow the CR100s to the grave, unless Sonos brings back partial controllers."

Also there is the "little issue" that none of the current App based controllers give the functionality of the CR100. 😉
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After digging around, found that my wife had a Samsung Galaxy S5 in her closet (replaced in turn by S7 and S8). So I started work on a factory reset, did some research and found demos of the S5 being left under water for an hour and doing fine. So loaded up Sonos app, pinned it as per directions and its doing fine. The issue of finding a wall mounted charging cradle for an S5 is a challenge. Found a desk docking station that I think I can pair with a Sonos CC100 (cradle) with some careful cutting and trimming and get it back into the same place as the former CR100. This might actually work. Some issues with pinning - it does not persist across power rebooting and software install/update may require the app to be unpinned. But once learned (and it's different on each Android version), it's not that hard to do. There are some Kiosk apps around that off persistence, but you still need to deal with getting access to Settings and/or PlayStore. My 2 cents.. :D
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So I took one of my CC100's cut it up, painted it black, bought a cheap S5 desk docking station, with some superglue and some shims, created the attached to hang in a bathroom cabinet. It's not as elegant and placing the S5 directly into the docking station is 1000x more difficult than holstering the good old CR100/CC100, but it does work. I find I leave the controller in the docking station 80% of the time vs 25% with the CR100.

Stumbled upon this Raspberry Pi case, which, with the touchscreen, would make a nifty Sonos controller, assuming someone builds the software.

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Official-Raspberry-Touchscreen-Display/dp/B01HV97F64/ref=sr_1_1

Userlevel 7
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I use one of these, although the touch-screen is primitive and can't compare to the screens on any modern cellphone.