Why can't failover alarm not be disabled by the app?

Don’t know. As far as I’m aware, the ‘alarm’ checks for connection at the moment it goes off, and doesn’t really care if there is a subsequent connection. The alarm is ‘playing’, so you don’t miss an event that you set the alarm for. Seems like a lot of extra effort to subsequently check for further connection, and switch from the Sonos chime to the ‘normal’ setting. 

I don’t mean to say it’s impossible, but it seems like a lot of code effort for little gain. How often, and when do I check for subsequent connection to the internet?

Or am I misunderstanding your post? Are you instead asking why an alarm needs to be acknowledged before you can play another source? I could see an automatic ‘killing’ of the alarm if you subsequently sent another command to that speaker. But you shouldn’t need to touch the speaker to kill the alarm, you should be able to do so in the controller. In which case, it’s just a couple of extra steps to acknowledge, then send a new stream to the device. 

Hi ​@Astralix 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Sorry to hear of the issue you’re having with turning of an alarm when the WiFi has been off.

If I understand things correctly, I think what is happening is that when the speaker plays it’s alarm, it sends out an event to the app, and the app will show the Snooze screen for the alarm. If the speaker is not online at the time the alarm goes off, then the event notification which would be sent to the app is never retrieved due to the lack of WiFi, so the app does not show it.

Sonos speakers are smart devices, and as such require a network to operate properly. While an internet connection going down is often out of a customer’s control, WiFi going down is not - if your WiFi network repeatedly falls down, perhaps you need a replacement router? If your internet connection went down but your WiFi remained, you would still get a notification in the app.

If this (loss of connection to your WiFi) is relegated solely to this particular speaker, however, perhaps there is interference - I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.

Thank you guys for the suggestions about why and how.

I may have a different guess what is happening and why and I hope for some SONOS guy to respond.

First of all, the speaker has plenty of WiFi and my logs do not show any disconnection. But there are a few radio stations that SONOS systems seem not to like. They do not play them at all, but it always takes a while to get the stream started. I never got a report why and how that may be caused by some streams from SONOS, but half a year ago I had to start the stream multiple times or call it by voice command, to get it working at all. Nowadays it plays on the first touch but with a random delay of 5..30 seconds.

My guess is, that the alarm handler is not checking (or not only checking) for the WiFi connection, but for the programmed stream to start playing. And the timeout for this specific stream is too short. So, thee days out of 5 I get thrown out of bed with this beeping sound, pressing stop on the speakers button and starting the stream manually on the App. And that works 100% every day.

That tells me that there is no WiFi issue involved but a state problem in the alarm handler.

But I’ll do a system report the next time it happens and add it to this thread.

And sidenote: I know at least one SONOS support guy who also prefers to listen to Sunshinelive in Germany and I do not know how he can let his colleagues mess with this station all the times ;)

Best regards!

Hi ​@Astralix 

I am some Sonos guy.

If this is not down to the stations themselves (something neither you nor Sonos can do anything about), then it is probably due to interference at the speaker or router/Access Point.

I’m not sure what you mean here, but the following information may be of help - the alarm is on the speaker, not the app.

The speaker attempts to play at the correct time. If it cannot connect to the stated source, a chime will play instead. The speaker will inform the app of the alarm going off. If the WiFi is down at that time, the app will not know that the alarm is going off - smart speakers need an operational network to function properly.

I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, but if you can’t do that, sure - let me know here when you have submitted a support diagnostic (without posting the number, please) and I’ll take a look.

I have no idea what you mean by this. No Sonos staff have any influence over any radio stations whatsoever (barring Sonos Radio curated stations, of course, which Sunshine Live is not an example of.

I hope this helps.

​@Corry P Sorry, missed that!

Okay, three things and hopefully a diagnostic code tomorrow morning. 

1. I am aware of the way how the alarm on the speaker works. It watches out for the stream to play in time and if not, the Beep takes over. I am sure, the reason why the stream was not playing is of no interest for the alarm. Maybe there is some log output.
2. I never said that any SONOS forcefully does suppress certain streams! I only stated that many streams work fast and reliable while others don’t. And Sunshinelive doesn’t work reliable for many years now, I even reported that here probably 3 years ago for the first time? Since the beta program the stream works even better. But still not good enough to be used for the alarm every morning?
3. The timeout for the alarm seems to be on the edge anyways, because it also sometimes fails on the very fast and reliable streams. That issue shows up in my dads setup. And as he has the speakers in his flat bundled, living room and kitchen, he needs to get out of bed, rund down the stairs and into the kitchen to stop the alarm. The speakers in the living room are ceiling mounted.

However, while I have a very complex multi WiFi multi VLAN Unifi network system, my dad has a simple out of the box FritzBox. He listens to major stations like WDR while I prefer niche stations around the world, but mostly Sunshinelive. He has the issue less often than I have it, but he is not the guy who is creating bug reports and sending diags. But I can’t do that for him, he is about 1200km away.

I started this topic because I wanted others to contribute same or other stations that show the same issue, for the software team to have more data to look into.

I’ll get in touch with the tech team. 

Hi ​@Astralix 

If you could not play any radio stations from a particular aggregator (like TuneIN, for example) then that would be something we’d look into. But, your being unable to reliably play one particular station when all other stations play without issue has more to do with that particular station than with us.

You many find that Sunshine Live is available on other aggregators, like myTuner, in which case it is possible that it will be more reliable there, but again, this has nothing to do with Sonos.

1. Isn’t the reason because WiFi was down, as you said? Is WiFi actually going down, or are you just presuming so because the radio does not play? There may be other reasons. Only if no WiFi devices are able to connect should you say WiFi is down. If one device cannot connect, that’s a problem for that device - it does not mean WiFi is down.
2. I recommend reporting it to Sunshine Live. If only one station has a problem, the problem belongs to that one station.
3. Honestly, this is starting to sound more like an issue with the network - a reboot of the router every month or so may resolve this. Can’t he stop the alarm from the Sonos app? Or a bedroom speaker? I’m not sure why you are describing the steps he takes to turn it off - how is that relevant to it sometimes not starting?

Looking at your most recent diagnostic, the speaker is reporting that a) it cannot find the specified station, and b) it needs reauthorisation for Sonos Radio. So, it may be an idea to try to play the station from the app just to make sure Sonos Radio has been authorised, but as to why the speaker could not find the station at that particular moment, I cannot say, but it may have simply been that the server was unreachable at the time.

Given that both you and your Dad seem to have issues playing this one station while being 1200km apart suggests to me that the issue lies with the station. I recommend that you ask your Dad to call us for an investigation.

I hope this helps.

Hi!

The behavior of the speaker and the explanation don't match.

Today I was up before the alarm fired. I had the app open and could see the speaker switching for stop and some volume level to silent and then falling back into the alarm.

While the app was open when that happened I was presented some buttons to pause or stop the alarm. That is completely new to me.

I stopped the alarm and pressed play on the exact same station it should have played instead of beeping and it played almost immediately.

Combining that with your information of my system having problems to log into TuneIn pro would result in the fact, that the speaker is using a different login for the alarm as it uses for the normal playback?

I had some issues with the TuneIn pro account as I forgot to tell them about the new credit card. Does that result in a key or hash change? It works fine niw. Except from alarms.

Dad and me have the same problem with different stations using different network systems. I can call him to call your support. 

I'll check for the authorization of Sonos radio, but I payed for TuneIn pro... Is this the same now? Could you explain that in more detail, please?

Hi ​@Astralix 

OK, given that you and your Dad both have issues with this station, and it predominantly seems to be when an alarm is set, specifically, perhaps it is due to the time you have set.

All devices (or nearly all, anyway, and certainly all Sonos speakers) that connect to the internet basically agree on the exact time to within a few milliseconds. If you, your Dad, and say, 1500 other people, all have an alarm set for 6:00am to play that particular station, it is entirely possible that the sum total of all your efforts to play the radio at exactly 6:00am results in a non-malicious, accidental DDoS attack on the radio station. Setting your alarm to either 5:59am or 6:01m may well fix this issue for you both.

If it does not, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.

It may be that too many people are setting an alarm for right at that time for that station and the servers are temporarily overloaded.  Try setting your alarm for 1 minute earlier so you can beat the others to the punch.  This has worked in the past for some.