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j_roc
Contributor I
May 3, 2021

Ability to Add Sonos Roam to Multiple Sonos WiFi Systems?

Is it possible to add a Sonos Roam to multiple Sonos WiFi systems?

I recently purchased a Roam and took it with me on a road trip. My in-laws have a Sonos system and I wanted to add my Roam to their system so I could get all of the benefits of using Roam over WiFi instead of Bluetooth. 

However, the only way I could get the Roam to connect to their system was to reset it to factory and set up the Roam as a new speaker in their Sonos system. When I came home I had to repeat the process by resetting to factory and adding it back to my Sonos system.

The feature I’d love to see is the ability to add a Roam to a second Sonos system over WiFi without having to remove it from an existing Sonos system. Ideally, after initial setup, the switch between Sonos systems would be done automatically based upon the connected WiFi network.

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    101 replies

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    paulhad
    Lyricist I
    June 19, 2021

    Just incredible that it doesn’t do this!  

      controlav
      controlav
      Lead Maestro
      June 19, 2021

      Yep, thanks melvimbe, this is was a good workaround for me and probably everyone with two locations.

      1. Set up the Roam regularly at home (location A) 

      2. Go to location B and take your Roam and your phone or laptop with you. Create a Hotspot at B that has the same SSID and Password as the WIFI in A. Your Roam will connect automatically. 

      3. Connect your Sonos devices from B to the Sonos system of your Roam (so they're all connected to your Hotspot) 

      4. Still at B, add manually, through the Sonos app, the native WIFI of B to the settings of all devices, including your Roam.

      5. You now have one singe Sonos system for location A and B together and you could bring any device from B to A and it would work right away. However, A and B are not linked over the internet and will feel like they're separate. 


      I think this is quite the most brilliant thing I have seen posted here in a long time. Can’t wait to try this with my Roam (from A) when I next travel with it to my location B.

      Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.
      paulhad
      Lyricist I
      June 21, 2021

      On an iPhone or Mac laptop this can only be done by renaming the device to give the desired SSID(?)

      Mschiraga
      Lyricist I
      July 31, 2021

      First feature request - I would love this. Have a ski house; have forced my whole family to get Sonos systems; not being able to connect when away somewhat defeats the purpose.

        deverman
        Lyricist II
        August 22, 2021

        The Roam should definitely be able to join another Sonos Household as a guest speaker. I just brought it to my girlfriends house and had to do a factory reset. 

        My buddy also has a roam on his boat and it was quite silly that we couldn’t pair them on his wifi network when we went out for a sail. You are hurting your sales of this product. How can I recommend to friends when they don’t come together like Voltron. Huge network effect your are missing out on that is hurting your stock price.

         
          Cring7
          Lyricist I
          August 27, 2021

          It is very disappointing that this is not a feature of both the roam and the move.   It’s seems like being able to move from one system to another should be built into a mobile system like this.  I probably would not buy another one until it’s added.  Would really like Sonos to consider it. 

            danjrichards
            Collaborator II
            September 8, 2021

            Hi @GottSeattle 

            Hi @GottSeattle 

            The Roam is designed to be added to your Sonos system and work with it just like another Sonos speaker - and then use Bluetooth individually while away from the home system. It was not designed to jump from one system to another without need for reconfiguration - this is systemic to how Sonos Households operate.
            However, it is not outside the realms of possibility that we may be able to add a feature whereby a Roam could jump from one Sonos system (Household) to another which is why I have tagged this thread as a feature request. 

            So then you can’t use voice assist on the run...just saying. Should easily swap between wifi networks. Not a hard thing to design and deploy.

             

            The Roam can and will connect to multiple WiFi networks - so you can connect it to WiFi while out-and-about.. What this thread is about, and what the Roam won’t do, is be part of multiple Sonos systems ie. jump seamlessly from one Sonos system on one network to another Sonos system on another network. This would require a factory reset. A workaround would be to create the second system starting with the Roam which had already been set up on the first. This is not recommended (especially if you make use of Voice Assistants) or supported, but would work. This way, the two systems would see themselves as being of the same Sonos “household” and the Roam would not need to be reset to be able to switch between being part of each.

            I'm thinking to buy a Roam for my daughter, but the difficulty/inability to connect to two Sonos systems may be a sticking point. We have one Sonos system at our weekend place, and am building another Sonos system at home. Until/unless the feature is introduced, can you confirm that the Roam set-up on system A could be used in location B as a stand-alone speaker (including on Wi-Fi) but would not be able to connect to system B? Would Voice Assistants work at location B?

            Or if both WiFi networks had the same SSID and password, would it be able to connect to Sonos system B? 

            j_rocAuthor
            Contributor I
            October 13, 2021

            @Corry P Any update from the product team on feature prioritization/timeline?

            Corry P
            Corry P
            Sonos Staff
            October 13, 2021

            Hi @danjrichards 

            Apologies - I don’t know why I didn’t see your question before now.

            Yes, if the Roam knows the WiFi password, it will operate independently of system B on the same network - with one major caveat: the Sonos app is not written to cope with finding two Sonos systems on one network and will simply communicate with the first one it finds, which may change randomly. Voice Assistants would likely work on both, as long as different voice service accounts were used for each system. I’d recommend using Google on one and Alexa on the other, just to minimise the chance of issues, as I’m not sure how two Alexa\Google accounts on one network would behave as this would be an unsupported setup.

            Yes, the networks could have the same credentials, but it’s not necessary; Roam will store multiple sets of WiFi credentials. It may make things easier though, as in order to teach Roam the new credentials the app would have to be connected to that network and be unable to find any Sonos system, so the existing system there would need to be turned off for the time it takes to teach Roam the credentials. It only needs done once, however.

             

            Hi @j_roc 

            I’m afraid not - they don’t share progress on feature development.

            "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
            jimhurman1
            Lyricist I
            November 15, 2021

            Please can you advise if and when this feature will be added to Roam?

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