Introducing Hue x Sonos Voice Control

​@Atom P 

Just a request… if SVC could have an announce / broadcast function I could free myself from Amazon Alexa.

Hi ​@Belly M 

I recommend that you start a new thread with your feature request, as we can’t tag this announcement article as one.

I hope this helps.

It’s getting off topic a bit, but there is no need for SVC to be a full Matter controller, it just needs to be able to pass commands on to a Matter hub.  This is essentially what SVC is doing with Hue.  SVC isn’t controller your lights, it’s connected to your Hue hub and pass the command along so that your hub can control your lights.

So I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility for SVC to be able to send commands to a Matter controller.  I don’t think there is a standard protocol for that, so I don’t know that it makes sense for Sonos partner with a specific Matter controller just yet (It’s not going to any brand that has their own voice assistant).  It’s yet to be seen how much AI voice is going to come into play as well.

The new Hue Bridge Pro is now available. Read about it at the link.
 

https://www.philips-hue.com/en-us/p/hue-bridge-pro/046677582111

By some value of ‘available’. It’s not available to order right now from Hue, or Amazon, currently. 

I take part of that back. Yesterday, Philips was out of stock, and I ordered it from Amazon, who also was out of stock. Today, Philips shows it as available. 

I have to assume that the partnership between Sonos X Hue is still in the finalization phase as I found the below interesting regarding the Hue Bridge Pro as Sonos SVC is missing (for now):

The Philips Hue home page is advertising the promo below which sounds good until you read the T&C’s (see last line). So, I tried my code anyway but no joy...so pay the $100 🤣

Hard for them to offer discounts on ‘new products’…but that’s a pretty generic statement, anything could easily be defined as a ‘new product’ until such time as it is replaced, like the BRIDGE/BOOST products, if you’re cynical enough. ;)

Installed the Philips Hue Bridge Pro. Installation was not as intuitive as I would have hoped. The one YouTube video I found was not helpful as it wasn’t an official Philips Hue. Scanning the QR codes weren’t very helpful either. There’s really no step by step instructions. However, installation may be more straight forward on a first-time install. 🤔

So, after plugging in the Hue Bridge Pro and connecting it to my router I finally just opened the Philips Hue app and chose add a Bridge. The Philips Hue Bridge Pro was found and proceeded with setup. As I was migrating from the older Bridge it took about 30 minutes to complete; as warned by the app. YMMV +/-. 

You will be required to enable (or re-enable) the Hue Skill in Alexa You will also be required to ask Alexa (if you are using it with Sonos or otherwise) to discover devices again; as well as with Google Home. Apple Home is a bit more involved as I Neve used it anyway I’ve skipped it for now.

SVC at the moment does not respond to the discussed features at this time.  I can’t find any type of link documented link between SVC and Philips Hue. Although I may be missing something. Maybe ​@Atom P can assist 😊

ProTip: If migrating from an older Bridge be sure to name your Pro with a unique name because you will be asked to identify it during the migration vs your current Bridge. The default name is Bridge which would have caused confusion had I not uniquely named it.