Question

Software update without wired internet access?

  • 6 September 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 827 views

First time posting, so any help is much appreciated. My Sonos system is set up in our small home in the mountains of Colorado and we unfortunately have no internet access. My Play 5 (Gen 1) is plugged into a WIFI router that I then access from my iPhone or iPad to control the system. Normally this works great. But this past weekend the Sonos control app on my phone told me that I had to update the software. I do get 3G cell service at the house but this did not help me. I’ve even tried a cellular hotspot but we're too remote and I can't get a strong enough signal.

This is the second time this has happened and rendered my system totally inoperable. My solution last time was to haul the whole system (including router) to somewhere that I can plug into the internet and then update everything. This is obviously a pain. Is there a way to update my speaker software without having access to a wired internet connection for my router? If not, can I somehow force the system to skip the update and allow me to still use the system?
Thanks in advance for any help!

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3 replies

In "Settings", under "Advanced Settings" you can disable the automatic update check, but once the system knows there is a pending update, you can't cancel out of it. I suspect you'll need to haul everything down again. And make sure your iPhone and iPad don't automatically update the Sonos app, otherwise when any device (player, speaker, controller) is at a newer version than the rest of the system knows there's a new update.

You should try calling Sonos support. If there is a way to do a local/offline update I've never heard of it in ten years. If you're really good with protocol sniffing and https proxy tricks there might some kind of clever trick but the request to the Sonos servers includes device serial number, sonosid, hhid, and the process validates that the firmware package is matched to the hardware. I think the update is also encrypted.
Thanks mataglap!
I'll check in with Sonos support, but disabling the auto updates sounds like it should do the trick. Hopefully we'll get good internet access sometime in the future and this won't be an issue.
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RichV, I have had the same problem even with the auto update turned off in the Sonos controller. I found that I also had to disable Auto-update of apps from the Play Store; at least that was with a Samsung Tablet.