Has anyone got an official answer from SONOS about AMAZON ECHO Integration?

Well you could release desktop app and one for the mobile.

Hi everyone,

I'm the guy who wrote the echo-sonos code at https://github.com/rgraciano/echo-sonos

This past weekend, I fixed some bugs and made it smarter - features like next, previously, & what's playing now all work reliably. I also added a bunch of features like playlists and favorites, and many new phrasings to make voice control feel more natural.

Hope it helps!
Ryan

Ok, so this looks complicated and will take a while for me to understand some of this, but given the money spent on sonos, echo and home automation, integrating sonos to echo is a must if i want to keep playing (and spending money) on gadgets with the girlfriends approval.

So a couple questions:
When you say the files need to be installed on a server, will this work on a NAS (have a drobo FS).
Is a Echo developer account still needed to get this operational? Was that difficult to get?

Why would Amazon want to integrate their wireless streaming speaker with a competing wireless streaming speaker?

this is why:

I have a Sonos Play3 in my kitchen and the Sonos Connect in my living room hooked up to my main stereo/speaker system. I also have an Echo in each room. The two Echos are linked to my one Amazon Prime account, but I can't control the two to play music together like you can with Sonos. Of if you're streaming Amazon music from one, you can't stream from both at the same time.

If Echo could output to Sonos, I could then have better sound for Echo but then ALSO have my Amazon Prime music pumped through my home stereo and no just through the smaller Echo speakers.

Evenf Echo simply had an output jack, I could plug that into the Connect's 'audio input' and that would get me halfway there (I could only control it from the living room Echo, not the kitchen Echo). But ideally, Sonos and Echo should connect via wifi and talk to each other, that would be awesome.

You've answered why you would like it, but that wasn't the question. Amazon wants to sell Echoes. Why would it waste all the intellectual property it has invested in Echo by allowing it to be used to sell Sonos speakers instead of Echoes?

Oh, that's easy...because Echo doesn't compete with Sonos...Sure, they're both 'speaker systems', but they compliment each others' strengths and weaknesses.

1) already have Sonos? Great...buy Echo and add voice commands to your Sonos, also, link your Amazon Prime music account to your Sonos.

2) Already have Echo? Great....make it sound even better by adding higher quality Sonos speakers. Link rooms together, which Echo can't do. (this is also an incentive to buy more echo's for other rooms)


Now, maybe Amazon has plans to expand their Echo product to include better speakers, but I don't think Amazon wants to be in the wireless speaker business. They want to be in the 'do all your shopping on Amazon' business, and Echo is the trojan horse to do that. (I haven't set it up yet, but will eventually getting around to buying basic stuff through Echo...mission accomplished, Amazon)

My personal example...I thought Echo was cool, but didn't have Prime and already had Sonos so it didn't appeal that much too me. BUT, I DO have INSTEON home automation. When INSTEON announced integration with ECHO, I bought one that day. Control all the lights in my house with my voice? Hell yes.

And it suddenly made sense for me to get an Amazon Prime account. Worked so well I bought the 2nd one a month later. I wouldn't have bought any of it w/o the INSTEON integration.

But that's just me.

Cross-posting from another thread as I see this one has Sonos staff listening:

I created an account simply to upvote and comment here: this is a huge miss on Sonos' part that a full year after Echo is GA and has dozens of other partnerships that Sonos remains out of the ecosystem. It's great someone has done some creative hackery on github to link the two, but this needs to be officially supported by Sonos.

I own an Echo. I don't own Sonos today, but I'd very much like to own Sonos. It looks like a great system and leaps and bounds ahead of your competition in this space (for now). However, a Sonos that doesn't communicate with my Echo is useless to me. Smartphone apps are nice and all - but I just TALK to my Echo and it plays music I like. Investing in a pricey Sonos system that can't tie into this feature is a step backwards.

Short story: Integrate with Echo, earn an eager customer. Don't integrate with Echo, or come out instead with some standalone lock-in Sonos-only Echo competitor, and my money will go to your first competitor that offers Echo integration.

--
and ps. to rmgraci: nice work! Tempted to buy a Sonos based on your awesome work, but they really need to integrate this into the core product. I'd be fine if they paid you some money and officially supported your work, but I won't invest an an expensive Sonos system where they might make a change that breaks your "user-supported customization" and breaks Echo support. Been burned by that too many times by other companies.

Sonos, here's your chance to partner with Amazon and add the ever-growing Echo customer base as your loyal customers too. If you don't do it, someone else will. Let's see what you can do!

Echo integration is...
As Echo not available outside of the US why would any company waste a large sum of money trying to integrate with anything that is not a global seller?

Until Echo becomes a global success, unlike a certain phone, there is no need to do anything.
The market is subject to a number of competing "standards" for automation. Which one will win?

Sorting out that Sonos refer to home cinema which is full of holes as to accepted data streams would seem to be of a greater priority in the shorter term. But then...more and more TVs output DD5.1...so what is the correct course.

They may want it, but it makes zero commercial sense for a now global company. How long will Echo be around. Still here and still fully supported in 5 years - nothing Amazon have yet produced is.
Trueplay has been explained ad nauseum - Apple microphones are consistent across the range of devices. Android microphones are not.
Which automation system(s) will come out on top? What should you throw lots of money at?

I'm not against progress but the completely unrealistic expectations of a noisy few who are in thrall of the new "look at this gizmo" does not make a company that people will support. I spent lots on Sonos gear simply because they have been around a long time and continue to support and develop their product - it has its compromises, but so does everything.
If people want to get stroppy and abandon a product that fulfills what it says it does and is fully fit for purpose then so be it. In five years time I bet they won't be so chirpy about their stupid decision when it breaks, is no longer supported, no longer produced. Amazon is a global company and can't afford to produce a product soley for the US market - they are in the business of selling you media and not hardware (witness their stand down in the tablet market to media consumption devices) Sonos sell hardware and their hardware must be good and fully supported to sell. A very, very different market.

So far, nothing comes close to what Sonos does in terms of quality product, functionality, support. Sonos's big hurdle is the playbar and optical input and no DTS.

Just my two cents from an infrequent forum user with a house full of Sonos players and now, four Echo devices. I've had an automated home for over a decade, with voice control for much of that system. The Echo is one of the most useful devices I've ever owned, replacing our previous method of interacting with the home via voice and, to a large degree, other devices. We now find ourselves using the Echo to stream music INSTEAD OF our Sonos players, which often sit inches away from the Echo. Why? Because it's 10x more convenient than picking up a phone or tablet or computer! Now, that said, the Sonos players sound dramatically better than anything except perhaps the entry level Sonos player, which I don't own. So for those who think the two systems compete, I disagree. Sonos makes a player / speaker that will satisfy all but the most hardcore audiophile, while Amazon is offering a device that sounds similar to, as someone noted earlier in this thread, a "boombox". It's not terrible, but it's hardly a Sonos and most Sonos users would not view the two as interchangeable IF - and this is the key - they could control the Sonos with their Echo. But as noted, for just background music, news or a podcast the Echo works very well. In that scenario, the system getting less use (Sonos) would be well served by getting their users to control their better sounding speaker with the more convenient but inferior sounding control device. Don't let us get too accustomed to the sound of that convenient little cylinder, Sonos, or you will find yourself selling far fewer of your better sounding units. Or, sure, just do what you're doing now - ignore us, and watch the dust collect on your equipment. Let's see if that convinces me to buy more...

I will download and play with the code from github (thank you, Ryan), but I'm hardly a programmer, so like others I will likely struggle. Some hobbyist users of our home automation platform have also released some code that attempts to integrate Echo and Sonos, so I'll likely mess with that, as well, after attempting my own clunky method of cobbling together the Echo with Sonos during some precious little free time earlier this week (I really do resent that, Sonos, as you're forcing me to do what I view as YOUR job). The bottom line is that this lack of even a glimmer of interest by Sonos reflects what I view as the ongoing lack of care Sonos has for its users. The company seems to think it's the hottest thing on the market. Well, it's a very good wireless speaker / player but its not the be all / end all of my world, or that of many others. So when we have guests over and they ask us whether we like our Sonos system (in multiple rooms) we say, "It's a great wireless system, but it would be much better if they played nice with others". I then tell them about the problems we've had with simple things like getting the IR repeater to work when the Playbar is hung on a wall (another "feature" from the Sonos engineers that makes no sense, and could be easily controlled with a user-selectable setting IF that team cared more about its ends users). I like the sound of Sonos, but I just find their development teams live in their own, little bubble. Frustrating.

Many other suppliers have already integrated with Echo, including Nest and Ecobee as thermostats, many home automation platforms, and a wide variety of services. Sonos, true to form, continues to lag. The result is an otherwise great product that continues to become increasingly less useful to users who have purchased it in the past, but are not convinced they will continue to do so, largely because of the Sonos "attitude" toward anything except adding yet another streaming service with a limited user base. These two products simply don't compete, and the lack of integration makes one much less useful. If there is a "battle" here, Sonos is creating it. And losing.

As Echo not available outside of the US why would any company waste a large sum of money trying to integrate with anything that is not a global seller?

I suspect that there are a lot of Sonos customers in America who would like Echo integration. I also suspect there are more Sonos owners who use Android instead of iPhone and Sonos has made TruePlay to only work with iPhone...

Nothing pisses me off more than companies that only put out one app in one ecosystem, usually Apple, and take forever or never put out an Android app.

But what about the Echo ONLY being available in the US at present? How and why would a global "premium" product company commit to a regional product?

Whilst the Echo remains a regional product , as the mantra goes, other automation new kids come along. That the Echo integrates with other products is one way. What about opposite spin. What products arrive with Echo integration? Given the choice already of different systems, why pick Echo?

Not sure I get your point about US only... Sonos already supports services that are restricted by region so how is this any different?

Also not sure what choice of different systems you are referring to that compete with Echo. If you are looking for a voice operated digital assistant and control interface for your home (as opposed to one operating on a smartphone or tablet) what other options are out there right now?

I for one am Canadian and have 17 sonos-I would LOVE echo integration but I guess I'm SOL since I'm not in the US...

I did a full Sonos Amazon Echo integration, you can read more about the project here: https://medium.com/@MathiasHansen/hacking-an-amazon-echo-and-integrating-it-with-sonos-75dbcc02f5b5#.p9vzjhd2g