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HELP! Cannot connect via bluetooth under public wifi

  • 22 January 2024
  • 2 replies
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M

I have a pair of Era 100, they worked very well in the apartment I used to live in. They can connect to wifi and bluetooth.

Now I moved to another apartment, where I don’t purchase my own Wifi and routers, the apartment takes care of it. This also means that my Sonos devices are no longer connected to a wifi system in which my phone’s Sonos App can find these devices (it’s one big wifi for all the 600 residents in this building).

And somehow because my Sonos app can’t find these speakers, I can’t get them into Bluetooth pairing mode. Does this mean I can’t use these speakers at all?

I tried:

  1. Resetting. But after white and yellow light flashed, green light started flashing, and no matter how long I pressed both of their Bluetooth buttons, no reactions at all, cannot pair. Also they seem to be not fully resetted. They still remember who they were.
  2. Reconnecting. I did manage to connect them with the apartment’s wifi. But they still won’t show up on the Sonos App, and cannot get them into pairing.
  3. Connect to my phone’s hotspot. Which uses cellular data, and I tried to use my phone as a router so another phone with the Sonos app can find it within this local network. Failed, would not connect at all.
  4. Connect via typeC ports at the back. To my laptop, nothing happened.

When I first moved here and took them out of box, I did get one of them to pair with my laptop via Bluetooth, the other won’t. After I tried to disconnect that speaker and let them pair with themselves, none of them would re-connect via Bluetooth. What is happening here? Can I connect them, or even just one of them, via Bluetooth? What should I do?

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Best answer by buzz 22 January 2024, 03:50

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2 replies

Airgetlam

Resetting has put them back to ‘fresh out of the box’, so they will no longer connect to any Bluetooth signal. You need to get somewhere that there is a WiFi signal that you and the speakers can be set up on again. Only then should the Bluetooth signal work.

For those reading along at home, this is yet another reason to never factory reset your Sonos, without explicit instructions from Sonos to do so. 

Bruce
buzz

Your best approach is to use a travel router to connect to the building WiFi, then use the travel router’s client WiFi for all of your devices. Building WiFi is OK for web browsing, email, or video play, but it will not support a system such as SONOS. Why? Because the building WiFi must prevent clients in different apartments from accessing each other’s data. The building WiFi does not know that your SONOS units are allowed to communicate with each other and your phone/pad. A travel router has two WiFi’s. One communicates with the building WiFi as a single client. The second WiFi can package all of your WiFi devices such that will then be accepted by the building as a single client.

The building goes through a similar process as it connects to the cable in the street. Down the street the process continues as your street is integrated into the ISP’s network, this aggregation continues until your ISP finally reaches a national Internet connection point.

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