Update on the problems with Google automation routines

Hi ​@Doug Ames 

Thanks for sharing your findings! We can’t really assist with Google Assistant functionality, so it’s good that you’ve found and shared this workaround to get routines working as they should!

Hey, this helped me too! My good morning routine started with bringing the volume down to 50% (in case my kids left it to 99% earlier). It seemed this prevented the rest of the routine (playing the news from two different sources) to run.

After several email exchanges with Sonos, they no longer want to intervene regarding the Google integration. This is certainly due to the lawsuits with Google... The customer is left to foot the bill. In France, the same problem exists: the "hello" routine hasn't worked for over a year, and the radio simply stops working. Recently, it has also stopped responding to simple commands like "resume" or even "playback."

If you’ve had these problems for over a year, there might be something else that is wrong. The problems OP found a work around for started in October. I just tried and “Hey, Google, play Walter Trout” still gets the system to play Walter Trout on Spotify. Only changes are that the system does not acknowledge it like it used to and it seems to react faster to my command. After implementing the above work around my “Good morning” routine works again. I never tried “pause” or “playback” as commands. “Stop” still works though.

I was responding to the fact that the "bonjour" routine hasn't been working properly for a long time now. When I run this routine, I get the weather, the day's events, and then the news (Radio France). The news doesn't work. And even worse... the stop command doesn't work in this situation :-)

As I understand it, Sonos just recognizes a wake word and passes the content of the command to ‘the cloud’ for processing, then receives a corresponding command from ‘the cloud’ for execution. If it isn’t processing your commands, that’s an issue with Amazon’s ‘cloud’, not Sonos. There is essentially no processing of voice on Sonos. 

Where Sonos does any internal processing is only with their own Sonos Voice Control. Which may be why it has fewer languages, due to space considerations on the individual speakers. 

We're talking about Google Assistant here ;-)I understand your point of view on the situation, but in that case, you'll have to explain why a simple Google Home Mini from 2016 still works perfectly well with commands that aren't recognized or are often misinterpreted on the Sonos One? Because if it's cloud-based, why does my Sonos One distort the command in those cases?

I’ve long noticed commands via Sonos are handled differently than commands made directly via Google devices. If I ask GA on Sonos to play NPO Radio 2, it gives me a different broadcast. Via my Google Nest Mini this works way better. If it indeed works as ​@Airgetlam says, and I have not seen evidence for the contrary, this would also be on Google. Maybe Google uses different servers for commands via Sonos. Maybe they (might even be inadvertently) give a lesser quality experience via Sonos.

We're talking about Google Assistant here ;-)I understand your point of view on the situation, but in that case, you'll have to explain why a simple Google Home Mini from 2016 still works perfectly well with commands that aren't recognized or are often misinterpreted on the Sonos One? Because if it's cloud-based, why does my Sonos One distort the command in those cases?

Google has complete access to the firmware on your 2016 device, and is obviously much more interested in making sure everything works correctly on their own products, after they make changes than they do on Sonos speakers (or any non-Google brand).  Making sure everything works on a Mini is surely an easier task since they can do all the troubleshooting in house, rather than having to collaborate with employees of a different company.  The Mini very well may have been built in anticipation of where the company wanted to expand to, rather than the Sonos One, which was built with Sonos expansion in mind.  Maybe more importantly, customers are tend to assume blame is on the company who’s name is on the device for any integration issues.  So where is Google’s motivation to address these issues?  They don’t bring in more revenue, and it doesn’t hurt the company’s public image.  In fact many customers may opt to buy a Google brand speaker next because of the integration issues.  It may be a problem they are better off not addressing.

Google reserves their special disruption efforts for Sonos only. Other Google Assistant speakers I have with outdated firmware going back 6 years continue to work just fine, equivalent to my Google Home speakers in most things, while with Sonos something new breaks in Google Assistant every couple of months. Sonos doesn’t even pretend to be attempting to fix these problems any more. I think there’s little doubt it’s the direct result of mutual enmity from the lawsuit.

I’ve not seen it mentioned here yet, but on the Dutch language community there a couple of people mentioning they can’t get the news from GA via Sonos anymore. This is happening on my system too. Be it as part of a routine or through a voice command, GA says “I don’t understand” when it should play the news. Does this happen in other languages too?

This happens with my native google hub routine, most times it doesn’t play the bbc news it’s supposed to, google is very unstable, probably Gemini implementation going all wrong with GA….so i guess nothing to do with sonos….

I can still get the Sonos speakers to play the news from a routine, but the exact order of the routine is very important now due to the new bugs. Any action which triggers a “non-standard” verbal response from the Sonos speaker will abort the routine at that point. Your best bet is to try changing the order of actions in the routine and see where it aborts, (In this context “non-standard” means not generated automatically by one of the built-in actions you can select from the new checklist. For example Action: Weather is a standard checklist action, and the verbal output it generates will not abort your routine on Sonos. “What is the inside temperature?” is not a checklist action, and the response it generates will abort your routine on Sonos at that point,)

Additional bug not specific to Sonos: I recently noticed that when I run a Google routine which activates a Scene as its last action, the routine never terminates. The Google speaker will remain rotating its lights to indicate that the routine is still in progress for hours - until I give it another command. If I re-arrange the routine so that there’s another step after the Scene activation, the routine continues and terminates normally. It’s getting difficult to arrange a working order of actions to get around all the defects in Google’s routines!

This is my good morning routine (in Dutch, sorry). Good morning, gives me the action “weather” followed by the media “play the news”.

It doesn’t matter if I remove the weather, it still goes “I don’t understand” when it should be playing the news. Since the weather is a standard reply if I understand you correctly, removing it would not solve my problem anyway?

This is my good morning routine (in Dutch, sorry). Good morning, gives me the action “weather” followed by the media “play the news”.

It doesn’t matter if I remove the weather, it still goes “I don’t understand” when it should be playing the news. Since the weather is a standard reply if I understand you correctly, removing it would not solve my problem anyway?

Unfortunately I have confirmed your result. Google Assistant on Sonos will no longer play a news summary from your selected source. It’s yet another new bug.

I didn’t notice because I have it play my local news radio station from Tune In instead, which it will still do. Alternatively you can ask “what is the news today”. and it will read the news headlines for you.

… and now I can no longer play my local new radio station. Google Assistant on Sonos now ignores commands to play a TuneIn radio station. And if it is playing it ignores the “Stop” command.

I  can still play the TuneIn station through the Sonos app, or by asking Alexa on the Echo Dot to play the station on the Sonos speaker. But I have to hit the manual Pause button to stop it,

I notice that the Sonos app says there is an all-new TuneIn coming and we will have to switch. I shudder to think what new horrors await.

Google is likely in the process of progressively phasing out GA.

Google has introduced an experimental new Gemini AI assistant version intended to replace the old Google Assistant, but so far it’s an optional update per home in Google Home, and speakers currently using Google Assistant are unaffected. I’m quite sure it will never come to Sonos speakers. And I’m quite sure it has nothing to do with the current problem, which is that the Sonos server is not processing audio playback commands from Google.

No Radio or Spotify for me too this morning. Removing GA from my speakers, removing Sonos from GA, reauthorizing Sonos on GA and reading the speakers helped for TuneIn and Spotify.
 

One thing is strange though. It seems I can’t add my address when adding speakers anymore.

Another question: has anyone said yes to the early access to Gemini? Did this affect Sonos (for good or bad)?

No Radio or Spotify for me too this morning. Removing GA from my speakers, removing Sonos from GA, reauthorizing Sonos on GA and reading the speakers helped for TuneIn and Spotify.
 

One thing is strange though. It seems I can’t add my address when adding speakers anymore.

Thanks for pointing out that support notice.

I had just figured out yesterday that my Sonos speakers were no longer responding to any media playback commands from Google, including Play, Stop, Set volume etc., although basic Google Assistant commands like Time? and Weather? were still working. Only Google was affected - Alexa, Home Assistant and other services could still perform those functions through the Sonos api. So either Google has their own api, or Google was being specifically blocked.

I did remove and re-add Google Assistant and got things working again finally, but it was the usual screwup. My Sonos app on Android successfully removed Google Assistant, but as others have been reporting for 5 months now, it could not re-add Google Assistant, getting stuck in a “No Connection - Retry?” loop. The workaround users came up with (no thanks to Sonos) is to use iOS instead of Android, Fortunately I have an up-to-date iPad, so I was able to do that. Final step necessary after re-adding Google Assistant to Sonos is that you must also re-authorize Sonos in Google Assistant.

And like you I could not enter my address during Google Assistant setup for unknown reasons, but no big deal, just skip it.