My question is: would it be possible for Sonos to add to the Sonos ecosystem a vacation mode? In that mode, when activated by tapping a button in the app, all the Sonos units would power down to an absolute minimum power consumption. With vacation mode enabled, all network activity of the Sonos units will cease, of course making them unavailable in the app. Re-activation will take more startup time as usual, for the units have to boot and initiate IP handshakes with other network devices. After having returned from vacation, a tap on the vacation button would be required to re-activate the system to the normal stand-by mode. This option would reduce power consumption during the absence of the user.
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This is a perfectly reasonable request but I doubt that it will be very high up on Sonos' development.priorities. And would it be possible with existing hardware?
You can achieve pretty much what you want by using Alexa-enabled smart sockets. A single Alexa command can then turn the whole system on and off.
I normally turn the whole system off if I go away for more than a few days.
With vacation mode enabled, all network activity of the Sonos units will cease, of course making them unavailable in the app. Re-activation will take more startup time as usual, for the units have to boot and initiate IP handshakes with other network devices. After having returned from vacation, a tap on the vacation button would be required to re-activate the system to the normal stand-by mode. This option would reduce power consumption during the absence of the user.
How would the vacation button work if all network activity has ceased?
How would the vacation button work if all network activity has ceased?
I wouldn't have a clue. But, then again, I'm not a software developer, nor an engineer. Those experts may have a solution to that (indeed) obvious objection. Consider what I wrote an idea, a wish, maybe to be realized in the (hopefully: near) future.
There is a technology known as Wake-on-LAN that allows devices to operate in a very low power mode while monitoring Ethernet for a special packet that causes the device to wake up. Without that Sonos has to keep most of the internals powered up, even more if a WiFi wake-up is to be supported.
I’m more than happy with the dumb switches I’m using to reduce wasted power. I have a stereo pair of Play 3s in a rarely used room powered down as well as my entire media room TV and audio system, that uses two switches, one for the main system and one for the surrounds. Both wake up and are ready to play in a couple minutes.
+24There is a technology known as Wake-on-LAN that allows devices to operate in a very low power mode while monitoring Ethernet for a special packet that causes the device to wake up. Without that Sonos has to keep most of the internals powered up, even more if a WiFi wake-up is to be supported.
I’m more than happy with the dumb switches I’m using to reduce wasted power. I have a stereo pair of Play 3s in a rarely used room powered down as well as my entire media room TV and audio system, that uses two switches, one for the main system and one for the surrounds. Both wake up and are ready to play in a couple minutes.
The Roam and Move both support Wake-on-lan, but history shows that has been a challenge to get right, especially over wifi. As someone who has written client code for WOL for both Sonos and Xbox, my technical summary for WOL is “iffy at best”.
I’m not an expert on this by any means. but not hard to see lots of issues with having a powered down mode that can be easily powered own remotely...when what you want to power down is the mechanism to communicate remotely. Even if you have through a smart plug in the mix, the plug itself has to draw power in order to communicate remotely, I would not be surprised if that often draws more power than the device you wish to leave powered down periodically, particularly if the device is powered on the majority of the time.
I wonder if BLE (bluetooth low energy) could be used as an alternative means of communication when the WiFi radio is powered down? Sonos modern speakers all have BLE, but not sure they hardware is setup in such a way that the speaker could operate this way. Also BLE does not have the range that WiFi does, which could be a problem in some homes.
I can see where Matter could be rather useful in this regard, since a Matter network uses both WiFi and a mesh network of the lowered powered thread protocol. However, I’m not sure Matter allows a device to be communicated to by both WiFi and Thread. And the use of thread wasn’t really about energy savings as it is taking burden off a WiFi network to relief congestion...at least as I understand it. And of course, Sonos hardware may not be able to handle a thread connection.
That does bring up another point though, and one that would be more of a deal breaker for me though. While some people may be fine with the Sonos speaker being offline for periods of time, or having to use the Sonos app to wake up a speaker, there are plenty of ways to communicate and control Sonos without the Sonos app. That could be voice control, a casting app like Spotify Connect or airplay, or smart home integrations. None of these would work while a Speaker is powered down, unless a secondary API is created to communicate with Sonos that doesn’t use WiFi. A very big change I would think.
Even if nothing is connected to a power supply, the power supply will dissipate a certain fraction of it’s maximum output while it idles. For the sake of discussion, let’s say 5%. This means that a power supply capable of 100W output will dissipate 5W at idle. One solution for minimum dissipation would be including a second, much lower output power supply, simply for powering a low power standby/vacation communication capability. When in standby mode, the main power supply would be disconnected from the power line and only the very low power standby communication would be active. While this sort of scheme could minimize standby power dissipation, the overall cost of the unit would rise because there would be more power supplies and probably two sets of wireless or wired networking. Over the life of the unit this extra cost for hardware could be paid for by the energy savings, but it might be a disincentive at the time of purchase.
Another scheme that could save even more energy would be to suspend all communication while in a ‘vacation mode’ and, using a battery backup, occasionally power up the communication system to check if there is a request to exit this vacation mode. When the user wants to exit vacation mode an App would be launched that keeps polling the vacationing system, indicating that the system should exit vacation mode. The vacationing device could check for requests to enter standby mode every half hour. This means that, on returning home, the user would need to wait up to half an hour for the system to come back online. I can imagine lots of user complaints about this delay.
There would be a certain “payback” period for including this extra hardware. There are actually two components to this payback. Obviously, there could be an operating power savings over the lifetime of the unit, but there are also environmental costs, first for manufacturing the extra hardware, then disposing of the unit at end of life. The extra hardware would increase the environmental costs, requiring a longer payback period.
An extreme approach would be to have all of the home systems participate in this vacation scheme that would be managed by a central cellphone type of hub. Using a cellphone, the user would indicate that the occupants will be home soon and the systems should exit their vacation mode. Bits and pieces of this approach already exist. Home security systems now rely on the cellphone network to communicate with the central station.
+19Hi
Thanks for your post!
Seems that realizing my idea isn't that simple… Anyway, thanks to everyone for giving feedback.
That doesn’t make it any less valid. Thank you - I've marked this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration. Keep the ideas coming!
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