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Hi everybody 💡🔊💡🔊

 

I'm excited to announce that you will soon be able to use Sonos Voice Control with Hue smart lights and plugs! Simply speak to your Sonos voice-capable speakers to turn your lights on or off, change colors, and more. 

 

What You’ll Need

 

When available, you’ll need:

Sonos products with built-in Sonos Voice Control include: Arc Ultra, Arc, Beam (gen 1 and 2), Era 100, Era 300, One, Move, Move 2, Roam, Roam 2, and Era 100 Pro.

Note: Hue bluetooth-only systems are not supported; a Philips Hue Bridge or Bridge Pro is required to keep everything in sync.

 

Available Voice Commands

 

With a simple voice command, you’ll be able to:

  • Switch the lights on/off
  • Dim or brighten lights
  • Change light colors (Hue color lights required)
  • Start scenes
  • Turn smart plugs on/off

Sonos Voice Control is available in US-English and French.

 

Additional Details

 

These new features are part of an update to the Sonos and Hue apps and firmware, rolling out in the coming weeks. Sonos Voice Control commands are processed locally on your speaker, and never stored or sent to the cloud, only to your Hue Bridge over the local network. You can take a look on our website for more about Sonos Voice Control. I’ll make sure to update the sub when this goes live as well.

Thoughts, questions, feedback? Share ‘em below.

This is awesome! I’d love to be able to support voice control for Home Assistant as well. That would unlock so much more functionality than just Hue support and would almost certainly encourage smart home users to adopt Sonos throughout their entire home.


it is available now...on my system nothing happens when I ask a voice controlled Sonos speaker to turn a Philips Hue light on or off.


Alexa already runs my house.. 


it is available now...on my system nothing happens when I ask a voice controlled Sonos speaker to turn a Philips Hue light on or off.

You need to go back and thoroughly read the announcement. SVC has been live for over a year. However, the integration with Philips hue hasn’t gone live yet.


Alexa already runs my house.. 

And your point is đŸ€”


Man... I really miss the good old days when the family got together around the tele to watch wholesome entertainment such as Octopoda doing whatever it is they do. Look at them...they are really enjoying themselves. Yeah, I know...I’m a baaaaad boy. Â đŸ€Ł

 


Not sure if I was looking at wrong bulbs?

But goodness those Hue bulbs are insanely expensive and over priced.


Not sure if I was looking at wrong bulbs?

But goodness those Hue bulbs are insanely expensive and over priced.

No they aren’t cheap. $41-$49_USD. However, they last a long time. Mine have lasted 3 plus years based upon my use. I don’t leave light’s turned on unnecessarily. Which is something I’ve tried to teach my wife. 😂😂😂


Use automations or motion sensors. Some of my hue lights are over a decade old


Very happy for this. I did wonder why Sonos didn’t do this when they partnered with Ikea - would have been a no-brainer with their Dirigera hub. But glad they are doing it with Philips now the Ikea deal has expired. I have switched continuously between HomePods and Sonos. I prefer the Sonos Voice Control for music but wanted voice control and automations for my smart home but not having to remember which one (SVC or Alexa) to talk to. Also found Alexa and GH very flaky. HomePod was always rock solid so I am hoping the link between SVC and Hue is reliable. I don't expect Sonos to be updating their players to be full Matter controllers if this is going to be a Philips only integration - which is a shame.


​@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.


I don't expect Sonos to be updating their players to be full Matter controllers if this is going to be a Philips only integration - which is a shame.

 

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 $100Â đŸ€Ł

 

 


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.Â đŸ€”

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.

 


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 😊

 

 

It looks like the apps software and player firmware have not released yet.

 

 


I have the Hue Bridge Pro and several Sonos speakers.  Updated all of them, but still not finding anything to link the Hue account with Sonos.  When I ask the Arc or Roam 2 to turn off the lights, it replies with “to enable voice control for your smart home devices, update to the latest version of the Sonos app, then activate the Home Control feature on your smart home devices app.” which implies it’s a change needed in the Philips Hue app, but there isn't anything found there either.


I think the key phrase in ​@melvimbe ‘s linked post is ‘you’ll soon be able to’. It doesn’t seem to define when. 


That’s awesome news! Controlling Hue lights and plugs directly with Sonos Voice Control will make setups much smoother. Excited to see this roll out soon!


Integration working well, took overnight before I could “command” individual Hue lights.

Blazingly fast response, excellent work!