Hi Support community, my Harmony Ultimate Remote stopped controlling volume on my SONOS soundbar within the last month. Environmentally nothing has changed. Same wi-fi, same tv same tv service, etc. I have disconnected the Harmony hub and reset it, I have done the same for the remote, nothing. I even have one of the Harmony sensors right underneath the soundbar IR (not sure if it is necessary or not but I found it working best this way since I don't always have the remote facing the IR - may be in a different room). Remote controls the TV and the DirecTv box with no problem. What to do?

Harmony Ultimate Remote stopped controlling volume on my soundbar

Same setup here, same issue on the same time scale. Not found a solution. Anyone any ideas?

Sonos did release version 7.2. Did either of you upgrade to that, and if so did the remote issues begin shortly after?

I don't recall offhand any recent updates for Harmony UR.

Hadnt updated when problem occurred, have now. Still not working. LG tv in case that matches.

I'm seeing a similar issue and it happened around the same time as folks here. The last few days I've had to use the Sonos app to control volume. My Harmony UR has been the "volume changer" for a year and a half now. Suddenly, it won't work.

Ok. I solved my problem. I did a number of things and I'm not sure exactly which step fixed the problem, but it was certainly one of these things that did it.

1) via Harmony Mac Desktop app, I deleted the SONOS Device which automatically removes it from all my Activities

2) I then added the Device going through the basic flow. (i.e. Brand: SONOS Model: Playbar).

At this step, the Harmony App tries to find my SONOS Device via Wi-Fi scan.

Problem: It found no SONOS devices (I have a Playbar and a Subwoofer)

3) Thinking it was maybe my Subwoofer, I unplugged my Subwoofer for 10 seconds and then plugged it back in

4) Went to scan for devices again

The good: It found my Subwoofer

The bad: It didn't recognize my Playbar

5) I went to my Playbar and unplugged it for 10seconds and then plugged it back in

6) Went to scan for devices again

The good: It found it!

7) Hit "Sync" on the Harmony Desktop App (with my remote control plugged into my computer).

**IF YOU RUN INTO A MUTE PROBLEM. CONTINUE TO STEP BELOW. OTHERWISE. I HOPE THE PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS WORKED FOR YOU!**

So after it synced, ta da, volume worked! But an issue I had in the past came up. My remote could Mute, but it could not UnMute.

😎 I unplugged my Harmony Hub for 10 seconds, and then plugged it in.

9) Hit Mute and UnMute. WORKED!!!!

WHY 10 SECONDS????

I get it. You're skeptical about 10 seconds. Well I noticed with my Sonos devices (especially the Subwoofer), that unplugging and replugging immediately isn't sufficient. I have a feeling some of these devices hold some energy to account for quick downtime. Internal reserve battery if you will. I don't know if this is necessary with the Harmony Hub, but you never know...

Pure speculation here, I'm wondering if the Harmony Remote uses the wifi connection (I have two Harmonys, I should know this but I don't!) to send appropriate signals to the Sonos devices, rather than IR, and possibly one or both of your devices had lost IP addresses? That would explain why rebooting them would bring them back up in the system, and working again.

And I agree, 10 seconds seems not very long. When I'm dealing with an internet connected device, I try to go with it down for a minute, to make sure that all capacitors, designed to stabilize units during minor power surge/interruptions, have the chance to lose all energy. Makes power-cycling a tad tedious, but I feel as though it's worth it.

@airgetlam. Yea - don't feel guilty. I'm a tinkerer myself and I feel like it was something I knew, but somehow forgot. Once you get the "smart home" going, you kinda forget about the intricacies of things until you kinda have to remember again.

I think you're right on about the devices losing Wi-Fi. I'm not sure if an update did it, or if something "just broke" as my system is connected using both Wi-Fi and Sonos connect (my Subwoofer is hard wired). I had to do this because devices would sporadically disappear from my clients, but I digress...

When I realized that the device wasn't being detected, it was an Aha! moment and I was hedging my bet that replugging in the wired device first (Subwoofer) and then the Playbar would cause the devices to reconnect to Wi-Fi and Sonos connect. The tl;dr to my Steps to Fix in my previous post could be boiled down to those 2 power down/ups I bet.

You've just encapsulated my life 🙂

Just wanted to let others know, I ONLY unplugged the Playbar for about 3-5 minutes and that did the trick. I didn’t remove the device from the remote or anything like that.

Thanks so much to all who posted and shared their fixes!! Really glad it was as simple as unplugging for a bit. 😃

Need to revive this. I have the same problem BUT the following. My TV has a playbar connected via optical audio cable. With my elite when I switch to the Apple TV everything works great. If I switch activities to the DirecTV everything still works EXCEPT the volume control. Mute still mutes and unmutes just fine. I've tried assigning the buttons manually to the TV volume control but that didn't change anything. The original setup that didn't work was through the DirecTV box, reverted back to it, still nothing. Power cycling the playbar doesn't fix the problem, everything stays the same. Lil help?

Two things:

1) After I had success getting it working, it later stopped again. I think it coincided with a software upgrade to Sonos and I fixed it by removing all Sonos and adding them back in. They came into the Harmony software different than before, so something definitely changed. After doing this and recreating my activities, all has worked perfectly.

2) Boryst, your problem may just need recreating (instead of trying to fix) the DirecTV Activity. I have found that starting from scratch on activities is sometimes the only way to make certain changes. Kind of a PITA, but is what it is.

I am having the same issue as you, boryst. The volume worked fine at one time, but it no longer controls my DirecTV sound. Sonos volume control when only playing music works fine.

I can second this. My Harmony just suddenly stopped controlling the volume on my Sonos play bar today. Mute still worked. After trying a few different things I had to completely delete my Sonos then re-add it and then set up my activities via the computer app not the iPhone app. I also had to adjust the command repeats but I am happy to say it’s working again

same here. suddenly stopped working with my harmony. Any other action still fine incl. mute/unmute. It seems I am not the only one, atm. plz help

This started happening to me in the last couple of days too. I don’t have the energy to reinstall the Sonos into all of my activities - it’s the one device that is included in every single one. I might try learning the old tv volume code which I have it programmed for instead.

Having the same problem. Tried deleting, editing and adding as a new activity, nothing seems to help. Everything works except for volume up and down, mute even works. I upated Sonos a few days ago, but im not sure if i had the problem before update or not. Some help from Sonos would be nice, at least let us know that youre looking into the problem. Thanks.

Hello everyone. Thanks for posting about this and keeping the conversation going. At the moment, Logitech is currently aware of a problem where Harmony remotes were sending the wrong commands to Sonos devices. They are investigating the cause and a solution. I will keep this up to date with developments as they arise.

Thanks!

I have been having this issue recently. A "work around" is as follows:

Instead of having Harmony control your Playbar - have your 'tv remote' control it instead.

In the Sonos app you can configure your TV remote to adjust the volume of your Playbar. You need your TV remote to do this. It will ask for you to hit your volume + key to program this. That way your actual TV remote will control your Playbar if you did not have a Harmony hub.

When setting up your hub, ensure that you do NOT have your Playbar enabled. Now your harmony remote will "think" it is adjusting the volume of the TV. Because you 'taught' your Playbar to accept these remote commands to adjust the volume, it will now adjust the volume of the Play bar.

NOTE. I still see the volume level on my TV as if it were adjusting the TV volume. This is more of an 'annoyance' than anything else. I have yet to find a way to 'disable' my TV audio volume on my Sony tv.

It sucks that this is the only 'alternative' but i'd rather this than having to get my phone to adjust the volume because my smart remote isn't 'smart' enough.

Hope this helps. Cheers.

I fixed it by basically wiping all my Sonos speakers and all of my activities that used Sonos speakers from my Harmony account. I then re-scanned for Sonos speakers, re-adding those devices and Activities again.

Harmony say that since their most recent update they are now using the "Sonos Websocket API" as per the official "Works with Sonos" platform. After installing the update my volume control on my Playbar was all screwed up. I figured it was some kind of mash up of whatever workaround Harmony were previously using, mixed in with the now official Sonos platform update. So it made sense to me to to delete all the Sonos devices from my Harmony account and any Activities that use Sonos. I then re-scaned for my Sonos devices presumably using the new API and then re-added my Activities. It's a pain but I've had no problems since then.

Interestingly before the Harmony update my Harmony would scan for my Sonos speakers and get them all wrong. For example, any stereo pairs that I had were down as two separate speakers. After the update it's now finding the correct rooms and has them paired and labelled correctly.

So in my humble opinion you need to delete any trace of how your Harmony previously used to interface with Sonos by deleting all the Sonos devices from your account and any Activties that used Sonos. Then re-scan for them and re-do your Activities using the new API that came with the last Harmony update.

Basically I did a fresh install of my Sonos devices on my Harmony remote and it's all been good since then.

--------------------------

I've done all that as well and nothing worked. I even purchased the new Harmony Elite controller and set everything up as pristine as it could be.... Nothing! 😞 Harmony is having a really bad issue with controlling the sonos bar volume. Hopefully they come up with a fix soon, because it kinda sucks haha. HELP!!! Please and thank you 😃

If you're only interested in using Harmony remote to control the volume of your Sonos playbar for watching TV, there is a convoluted but more elegantly operating solution. Rather than program Harmony to control Sonos directly, program it to control a proxy. I added an AV Receiver (Sony, STRDH550) to Harmony. I then went into the Sonos app (Settings/Room Settings/"Room with Playbar"/TV Setup and Control/Remote control setup) and told it I wanted to use an AV receiver remote to control Sonos volume. The Sonos app asks you to hit the volume up, down and mute buttons a few times. Voila, now your Harmony remote controls the Sonos volume. You'll have to edit the Harmony activities that used to use Sonos device for volume to now use the AV receiver. To be perfectly clear, I don't actually have an audio receiver. It's just a fictional proxy. The biggest advantage to this is that now signals are sent to the Sonos by infrared rather than through the internet. Its a much more elegant solution as long as your harmony hub has line of site to your Sonos playbar. One advantage is that the volume up function now unmutes like every other remote, instead of having to hit the mute button again. Also, the light on the playbar blinks when you are adjusting audio, so you know you're getting through.

As from 10 minutes ago, my hub rebooted and volume works now again.

Must have been some api update pushed or something.

Volume works again , yeah!!!!

This isn’t a solution but rather an observation. I opened the Sonos app on my phone and watched to see how the volume was being adjusted. It does work, however it only seems to send a signal once a second. If I press and hold it only sends one volume command. If I press quickly, it only sends about once every ten clicks. If I press once a second it works, but with a delay. Hope that helps someone at Logitech resolve this. Not looking forward to redoing my whole setup from scratch. 😞

Tried the full wipe as well as rebooting the hub and Sonos, and even re-installed Sonos from scratch..nothing seems to help. I guess I'll have to wait for a Harmony update to hit my hub. Incidentally, the volume does work, only very slowly and in incremental stages - the remote seems to send a +1 volume blip every 4/5 seconds or so. Truly maddening.. i've spend the last 3 hours trying to make it work..not the idea Sunday morning by any stretch. Luckily this is not GP race weekend.

volume back to almost un-usible again.

It worked pretty good (not perfect, but usable) this morning.

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