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Ducking a zone - Ring Doorbell

  • 7 June 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 30 views

I have a ZP100 (very retro I know) 🤣 which is in a standard Alexa Group (NOT a speaker Group) with an Alexa Echo device

It’s set up WIRELESSLY to play all music through the external speakers connected to the ZP100 rather than the Echo.

So Alexa’s spoken responses to any questions we have are routed through the Echo which is as I expect

If our request is radio/Sonos related the resulting music is played through ZP100 and external speaker again as expected.

If we issue a voice command to the Echo while the ZP100 is actively playing “Ducking” occurs for the duration of the interaction again as expected, so far so good!

The one thing that is puzzling me is that when our Ring Doorbell is triggered the alert on the Echo plays the “Someone's at the Door” alert that we’ve set up but no ducking occurs on the ZP100 which makes the option to “Answer Front door” voice command that we may choose to issue just a little more complicated because of the background noise from the unducked ZP100

 

To get around this I’ve set up a routine to pause the ZP100 when the doorbell rings so that we have a quiet environment in which to interact with the doorbell if we choose not to go to the door and that works fine albeit I can’t seem to get it to pause for a set period so music then needs to be started again “Manually” with another voice command when we are finished with the Front Door which is not the end of the world but it has me wondering

 

Should an incoming doorbell alert on the Echo (which isn’t an Alexa triggered voice command afterall) result in Ducking becoing active and if so what is missing in my set up that prevents this from happening?

 

and if not………..

 

is there a way that my Alexa routine can be modified to be time based on the ZP100 pause rather than an indefinite pause that requires a voice command to play again.

 

Thanks in advance 

 

 

2 replies

melvimbe

I have a ZP100 (very retro I know) 🤣 which is in a standard Alexa Group (NOT a speaker Group) with an Alexa Echo device

 

 

This statement is a little confusing.  Do you mean to say that you have an Alexa group setup, and the the ZP100 is setup as the speaker for that group?  When you say *NOT a speaker Group*, you’re talking about Sonos grouping feature, not tied to Alexa at all, correct?

 

Should an incoming doorbell alert on the Echo (which isn’t an Alexa triggered voice command afterall) result in Ducking becoing active and if so what is missing in my set up that prevents this from happening?

 

 

Your Sonos speaker is receiving the ducking command from the echo. It’s not receiving a play-by-play of what’s happening on the Echo and deciding whether to duck or not.  In other words, you would need to talk to Amazon about why ducking isn’t happening for doorbell alerts.

 

 

and if not………..

 

is there a way that my Alexa routine can be modified to be time based on the ZP100 pause rather than an indefinite pause that requires a voice command to play again.

 

Thanks in advance 

 

 

Sounds like another question for Amazon.  You may find someone with an answer here, but Sonos isn’t really playing a big part in this and you are likely to get better answers on an Amazon forum then here.

Danny
BaldyBouncer
Userlevel 2
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Thanks for your response Danny

The reason I asked on here is that I understood that Ducking is a feature that Sonos were involved in the design of  and had tweaked several versions of Sonos firmware to get working correctly and my experience of Amazon Tech Support is that any interaction is pretty pointless as they are simply not structured as an organisation to deal with anything more than “Turn it off and on again” I find their support utterly hopeless.

 

This forum on the other hand I’ve found to be far more knowledgeable over the years

 

To clarify my position you have 2 options for grouping speakers on Alexa

 

The first option is a simple group where you tie an Alexa device to a piece of audio kit (Speaker, Bluetooth amp, Zone player etc) This is what I’ve done and my group purely consists of a ZP100 and an Echo with the ZP100 set as the default to play all music through that would otherwise play on the Echo. So if for instance you were an Apple Music subscriber you would ask the Echo to play something that would ordinarily play through the Echo but as grouping exists all music output is through the ZP100. Alexa’s response to your instruction  would be “Playing Apple Music……..on Sonos” and that response would play on the Echo immediately prior to the music beginning on the ZP100

 

“Combine Speaker” Groups on Alexa  is more to do with linking different Alexa products together in much the same way as multi room/zone linking in Sonos works, or linking two Alexa devices to create a stereo pair etc, this option is not applicable to my needs so I went for the “Standard” grouping as described above.

 

Putting my question another way……………. if I begin an interaction with Alexa by issuing the wake word then ducking on the ZP100 works exactly as it should immediately after the wake word in readiness to hear the rest of my voice command and ducking remains active until the interaction with Alexa is complete and the Echo returns to standby

BUT…..

The Ring doorbell being rung and Alexa Echos spoken response to this action “There’s someone at the Front Door” doesn’t involve the wake word but given that Alexa is talking I would ideally like ducking to become active but it doesn’t.

 

I’ve just extended my test scenario to a reminder set to trigger at a given time which will be announced on the Echo and again it doesn’t duck the ZP100 so the reminder is drowned out by the audio on the Sonos player.

Neither the reminder or the Ring scenarios are ideal.

 

My recollection is that if you actually hardwire the Echo into the ZP100 such that ALL audio comes out of the ZP100 speakers at all times then ducking becomes an issue as the wake word effectively mutes the ZP100 so that your interaction with Alexa can’t be heard as the speaker for the Echo is muted. unless of course this had now been solved by a firmware update?

 

The scenario's outlined above  seem so obviously bad that I’ve convinced myself i’m doing something wrong and was therefore looking for some advice

 

Cheers

 

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