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Sonos Roam and Traveling with Wi-Fi

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
July 11, 2023
52 replies
4979 views

Hoping to get some clarity from the community on how painful this is supposed to be…

I am travelling with a couple of Sonos Roam between my home and various office locations. I’m one of few very oddball people that like STEREO, you see. And I understand that the roam is intended as a Bluetooth MONO system when roaming, but since I am a difficult customer I tend to hook them up using the Wi-Fi network to get STEREO. Like we have had since the 1930s.
So far, this has required a factory reset of the speakers EVERY TIME to connect to a new Wi-Fi network.
Today I contacted support and asked how to do this without factory reset, and was told that this was not possible, I needed to factory reset. Pain.
The experience at every location so so far has been, step by step:

Start Sonos app, it finds the system missing and select the change network option.
Attempting to find the system fails with “Sonos not found”. Surprising, since it's already connected via bluetooth, but apparently it's incapable of finding what it is already connected to. (Unlike my camera, my car and everything else that seamlessly configures network over Bluetooth and switch to WiFi transfer mode as required...)
Disable bluetooth on my phone in the hope that it will connect over WiFi.
Being told by the Sonos app to turn on Bluetooth, in which case it again connects to the Sonos Roam over Bluetooth, and still “Sonos not found”.
Give up, and perform factory reset of both Sonos Roam.
Detect both Sonos roam, this is hit and miss and sometimes a royal pain.
When they are found, the funny thing is that I am already logged into the app, but now I need to re-enter my user name and password to log in again. More needless pain.
Attempting to add the speakers back to my main system will not work, since I am not on my main wifi network. Therefore have to set up a new system.
Hooray. Now finally able to use my roam speakers. In STEREO. But all my settings, favourites, playlists and music services are wiped out. So I don't have anything to listen to anymore.
I can now start the process of reconfiguring the system from scratch.
Tomorrow I am going to another location with another WiFi network, so I look forward to having to set up all settings and music services from scratch again.

Did I get this right? Is that how the Sonos ownership experience is supposed to work? What is the point of having a Sonos account? Did I miss something?

I have been a Sonos customer since 2006, and have two houses full of Sonos gear, but it's becoming increasingly harder to justify the huge investment in effort to keep these systems running.

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Ken_Griffiths

Just to also add, I used a different WiFi SSID ‘ThoriumWiFi’ - that was to ensure there would be no conflict with the earlier ‘ThoriumP’ WiFi network (I actually deleted ‘ThoriumP’ via the controller network list and removed it from the Roam). I assure you I did not factory reset my controller device or speaker - as you can see all the other networks are still in the network list (see attached) which shows neither were not reset.

J

John B

I can assure you it works here for me @Thorium Prime

I just select ‘let’s fix it’ when opening the controller (mobile controller device is already on the new WiFi network)

Yes, this is what fails in my case. Rather consistently. And support says the remedy is factory reset.

Support is wrong. Ken is right. Please see my post.

I wonder if it is the nature of the WiFi you are trying to connect to. You mention “office locations”. For example, Sonos does not support Enterprise networks.

T

Thorium PrimeAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

I feel disinclined t help someone as sarcastic as you, but…

No worries, you haven’t. 🙂

I believe the confusion lies in not distinguishing between switching between WiFi networks and using the Roam on multiple Sonos systems

Not that confusing, the goal here was simply to add the Roams to a new WiFi network. They were already on a separate system (separate from the other 10-15 devices I own), so expected it to be unproblematic to port this system to a new WiFi network while retaining configuration and services. I was unfortunately wrong.

Good lluck.

Thanks. 🙂

Ken_Griffiths

I can assure you it works here for me @Thorium Prime

I just select ‘let’s fix it’ when opening the controller (mobile controller device is already on the new WiFi network)

Yes, this is what fails in my case. Rather consistently. And support says the remedy is factory reset.

I would have just tried a reboot of the speaker first or (if accessible) maybe a reboot of the local router - but as I mentioned earlier it’s often handy to carry the system/household with you by adding your own mobile hotspots to the list of networks, so maybe do that too next time and then the Roam should hopefully Roam for you, one way, or the other. 🤞

J

John B

I wasn’t suggesting you were confused in your aims, but that Sonos Support are confused about the circumstances in which a factory reset is required, and that you should therefore ignore their advice. But whatever, I regret these few minutes of my life I will never get back...

T

Thorium PrimeAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

I would have just tried a reboot of the speaker first or (if accessible) maybe a reboot of the local router - but as I mentioned earlier it’s often handy to carry the system with you by adding mobile hotspots to the list of networks, so maybe do that too next time and then the Roam should hopefully Roam for you, one way or the other. 🤞

Thanks Ken,

I have been rebooting many times, but the inability to port over to new networks have been rather consistent over the past year. Factory reset of course will solve the issue, but at a very substantial hassle. Was hoping to get the Roam to roam without having to feed it the same SSID at every location, but most pointers I get here seem to imply that this is the solution.

Perhaps something is not optimal with my controller/phone or maybe there is something else. Perhaps my account has a problem syncing information for whatever reason (when adding new devices it keeps asking me to re-enter my credentials even when I am logged into the app).

I have to admit I was expecting more in 2023, especially seeing how my other devices use Bluetooth to bootstrap WiFi connectivity. The Roam just sits there, dumb as a brick, and can't help itself to the WiFi network...

Ken_Griffiths

I agree with @John B, Support do seem to have been a little premature with suggesting a factory reset, as the ‘let’s fix it’ option in the S2 Sonos App is clearly shown in their own support documentation as being the way forward to add a new wifi network to an existing system/device.

I would have certainly rebooted the speaker, router and the mobile phone/controller too, and also in the latter case, switched off things like MAC Address spoofing, WiFi calling, low data mode etc… and ensured any security software like vpn, firewall, anti-virus etc. were disabled and even moved location/nearer to the router if it was perhaps some distance away from where trying to setup the Roam.

I think suggesting a factory reset (as with any product) is just a very (very) last resort option when everything else has failed. Of course it could be the router itself that may have an issue and that’s why I would certainly consider adding a mobile hotspot to the Sonos setup too, as it provides a ‘plan B’ option to hopefully get things up and running.

Ken_Griffiths

For what it’s worth @Thorium Prime I was using an iPhone XR with S2 App v15.5 build 73042060 - the iOS version on the mobile is 16.5.1

T

Thorium PrimeAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

I would have certainly rebooted the speaker, router and the mobile phone/controller too, and also in the latter case, switched off things like MAC Address spoofing, WiFi calling, low data mode etc… and ensured any security software like vpn, firewall, anti-virus etc. were disabled and even moved location/nearer to the router if it was perhaps some distance away from where trying to setup the Roam.

I don't think switching off VoIP calling on the phone is going to make any difference, and rebooting local infrastructure probably isn't helpful considering I am now on the third location/network with the same problem over a time period of several months.

However, I just tried to swap network from one to another completely different network, this failed two times with “there was a problem connecting your Sonos to NNNNNN”. The third time it worked...

However, this was when the Roam was already connected to the previous network. I am beginning to think that the Roam needs a factory reset unless it already has continuous internet at the moment you try to connect it to a new network. Does this align with peoples experiences?

Ken_Griffiths

I don't think switching off VoIP calling on the phone is going to make any difference, and rebooting local infrastructure probably isn't helpful considering I am now on the third location/network with the same problem over a time period of several months.

However, I just tried to swap network from one to another completely different network, this failed two times with “there was a problem connecting your Sonos to NNNNNN”. The third time it worked...

However, this was when the Roam was already connected to the previous network. I am beginning to think that the Roam needs a factory reset unless it already has continuous internet at the moment you try to connect it to a new network. Does this align with peoples experiences?

No, if you put the controller device onto the brand new network and power on the Roam - you should be able to open the controller App and select ‘let’s fix it’ - follow on-screen instructions to then add the Roam to the network. That’s what I did with the 2nd test earlier and added the Roam to the "ThoriumWiFi" SSID network. I don’t normally go that route however, personally speaking, as I prefer to do it from ‘Update Networks’ from a WiFi connection, but either way appears to work fine.

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