Reduce idle consumption energy level (currently around 5W)
Sonos devices on average consume about 5 watts each if idle. Having 5 sonos devices around this means 25 watts on average idle consumption. Over a year this is about (25x24hx365) 219 kwh. In Germany where 1 kwh is about 0,30 Euro Cent this then means about 70 Euro (about 100$) just to maintain an idle system. This is just too much and could easily be reduced. Looking at the environmental aspect this gets even more critical: There are around 2.5 million Sonos devices around. This adds up to 110,000,000 kwh or 110 million kwh.
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Userlevel 1
I love my sonos system but I love my planet more. Something has to be done on this via firmware.
The idle power draw has definitely kept me from adding more units to my system.
The idle power draw has definitely kept me from adding more units to my system.
I would love to see a powersave feature.
Example: i usually dont need it between 01:00 and 05:00 o clock.
This could be very easilly configured.
Also wake up on press could be implemented in conjunction.
Chris
Example: i usually dont need it between 01:00 and 05:00 o clock.
This could be very easilly configured.
Also wake up on press could be implemented in conjunction.
Chris
Userlevel 1
Agree particularly for the sake of greener environment. Sonos should implement sleep mode in all its players. Their cases are quite hot to touch even when idling for whole day. In the mean time, I can only use timers to switch all Sonos players off before I go to sleep and switch back on in morning.
This issue makes me think about Sonos alternatives. The idea of Sonos is great, but the standby power consumption is a no-go for me, so I havent bought any Sonos device yet. My favorite setup will be a CONNECT and a PLAY:5.
@Sonos: Please implement a solution for the standby power consumption or let the system power off easily and convince me to choose your products ;)
@Sonos: Please implement a solution for the standby power consumption or let the system power off easily and convince me to choose your products ;)
Userlevel 2
+1 Some sleep mode would make sense. May be it's possible to implement some "wake on LAN" function that one can en-/disable. So I can decide wether I want "instant on" with higher idle consumption or less consumption at the cost of longer "boottime"...
Please Sonos build something like the mentioned schedule. It would be so nice to shut off the system for example from 12pm to 6am so it would save the half of the standby power consumption costs.
Would be so great if we hear anything from you.
Would be so great if we hear anything from you.
+1 for standby / power off
This is a concern when expanding the Sonos family in an household:
Userlevel 1
totally agree to the topic starter. But I do not think a wake-up funtionality would maintain the convenience nor rock-solid reliabilty of the product. Just look at all those airplay speaker for 500$ and above and read about the connectivity issues they have all the time. A compromise also supporting recent hardware may be a timer or scheduling service Sunday to Saturday. For example anyone with a job is 40 to 60 hr a week away from home. You know those things which are predictable could easily configured and save energy and money highly appreciated!
When playing music my P:5s use ~15W and 8W on stand-by (as measured by a power consumption meter). Anything that consumes 50% of operational power when in stand-by is not in stand-by or is from a company that does not really care about it's corporate social responsibility or it's consumers' energy costs or where all this wasted energy comes from or goes to. When operational and with Play units operating without wired ethernet, the Bridge uses 3W and this is the maximum amount of energy I would expect any Sonos product to consume when then the amplifiers are not being powered but the SonosNet is running; I have no knowledge of Sonos' other products so cannot comment on P3, P1, etc but would like to know if anyone has reliable consumption figures (how about you Sonos? - are you prepared to publish your own data?).
I would like my Sonos products to have a couple of power-down states, from the current stand-by through to being in a 'fully off' situation that requires a user to press a button on a Player that turns on the unity and sends a WOL packet for re-connection. In this way a Sonos device could operate with very, very low consumption. An intermediate state would be a situation where a software 'WOL' could be operated from a controller via a Bridge.
Come on Sonos. I'm sure there is much more that can be done with the software. If people are prepared to spend money on timer-switches they care about power-consumption.
I hope you take this up.
I would like my Sonos products to have a couple of power-down states, from the current stand-by through to being in a 'fully off' situation that requires a user to press a button on a Player that turns on the unity and sends a WOL packet for re-connection. In this way a Sonos device could operate with very, very low consumption. An intermediate state would be a situation where a software 'WOL' could be operated from a controller via a Bridge.
Come on Sonos. I'm sure there is much more that can be done with the software. If people are prepared to spend money on timer-switches they care about power-consumption.
I hope you take this up.
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.
While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.
You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html
Guys I how been having an extended conversation with Sonos support. My proposal is below on how to tackle the fact that for the majority of the time your Sonos products are not actually in use i.e. You are asleep or at work paying for your Sonos products! Please share to try and get others to swing behind this..... Assuming you agree? Now coming back to the reason Sonos do not want to power down their range. This is so music can be ascertained instantly from any of the Sonos product range. However, what I am trying to propose is an option, so customers have a choice, to set a power down schedule. By example: The system shuts down at 01:00 in the morning and comes back online at 07:00. A few minutes after 07:00 the system is back to being its fully responsive self. A disclaimer could be put in place to say between hours selected (i.e. 01:00 and 07:00) you will experience extensive delays whilst your sonos comes online. If you add multiple schedules it means you could power down Sonos during the working day. The combination of both power down options saves considerable power. - Such a proposal does not effect your current customers as it is an option. - It enables your components to have a rest. Thereby extending the life of the components, which would be another environmental tick in the box. - Your customer's save money by not paying for electricity they are not effectively using. - Sonos equipment is not burning electricity for effectively no reason at all, as these component are never used during these hours. - Your customers are happier to know their sonos systems are equipped to be environmentally considerate. - It helps promote sonos's environmental image. I appreciate Sonos development may say with such low idle power what's the issue. However, Sonos have done such an excellent job seeding their speaker range, that I and many others are now up to and in excess of 20 components. So multiply the idle power by 20! To me and what would seem many others, this is a big topic area, one sensitive with your customers, and should be an item -environmental concern- the top of Sonos's agenda.
Userlevel 4
+6
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.
While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.
You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html
The same argument goes the other way around. I'm using smart outlets and my only problem is loosing the playlists. :P
So no, we need both, but of course I will be happy if they realize any of the useful ideas at all.
Finally its a shame how non-ecologically Sonos is.
I still don't understand how this power saving thing is supposed to work in a large installation where idle players are still routing traffic for players that are being used. Am I supposed to guess the optimal route for a given player within the wireless mesh and then go from room to room turning on the intervening players that the signal needs to travel through before I can get music in the room I want to play?Also losing player state and playlist information is not acceptable under any circumstances. It is bad enough when it happens due to an unintentional power failure and it will never be an acceptable compromise to achieving other design goals.
Heros 7 : stand-by 4.5watt (network standby), 0,3 watt ( deep standby).
Hi,
I am considering to by Sonos products to cover my house. Roughly 10 units to make stereo pairs. It represents 50w (5wx10) 24/24h x 365 so about 70 EUR per year, 200 kg of CO2 over the year.
This is non sense. For most of the people, between work and night, the system is consuming power for nothing.
For now I am holding from buying. Reading at this post, over 4 years old now, it is clear that Sonos does not mind a penny of power saving request from customers.
Corporate responsibility is equal to 0 on that regard.
Denon Heos offers deep Stand By mode where the units are drawing only 0,6W, which is much better. Caveat: user has to put manually in deep sleep mode and to reactivate manually as well. So it is pretty useless. Not buying either.
Bluesound does not seem to do better...
Will need to spend extra money to buy smart plugs to program time when power can be cut off night and working hours). Considering the savings made it will take a few years to get the money back but at least, the little birds will love me...
I am considering to by Sonos products to cover my house. Roughly 10 units to make stereo pairs. It represents 50w (5wx10) 24/24h x 365 so about 70 EUR per year, 200 kg of CO2 over the year.
This is non sense. For most of the people, between work and night, the system is consuming power for nothing.
For now I am holding from buying. Reading at this post, over 4 years old now, it is clear that Sonos does not mind a penny of power saving request from customers.
Corporate responsibility is equal to 0 on that regard.
Denon Heos offers deep Stand By mode where the units are drawing only 0,6W, which is much better. Caveat: user has to put manually in deep sleep mode and to reactivate manually as well. So it is pretty useless. Not buying either.
Bluesound does not seem to do better...
Will need to spend extra money to buy smart plugs to program time when power can be cut off night and working hours). Considering the savings made it will take a few years to get the money back but at least, the little birds will love me...
It really must be possible to reduce the standby power consumption. This is the one thing that I don't like about Sonos so far.
I, too, have concerns with the power consumption and also being bathed in WiFi energy while asleep. I would feel much better if I could sleep the units overnight or on demand. It's really the only concern I have with the Sonos system.
Userlevel 4
+6
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.
While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.
You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html
So the bridge provides only wireless for one player?
Userlevel 5
+4
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.
While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.
You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html
The BRIDGE will provide wireless to multiple players, but they all ultimately work together to boost and strengthen each other. That's why the Wi-Fi hardware always stays on even if the player is wired, while it may not seem to be using that hardware it is working with the other players.
My suggestion in the last comment was for an 'all wireless' setup, which would not use a BRIDGE.
If you are using a BRIDGE you can disable to Wi-Fi hardware in ALL wired players.If you are not using a BRIDGE then you would have to only disable the ones that are excess to the wireless players.
Userlevel 4
+6
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.
While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.
You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html
@kmjy
Thank you. Of course I will check the signal strength matrix to be sure that all sonos players still have enough signal. The reason why I asked is one of my players that is placed directly beside the bridge. Maybe you ask yourself why I'm having a bridge. This is because I'm using outlet switch timers and this player that is connected through cable is not powered on all the time. By that I reduce the power consumption to a minimum, but it causes an empty playlist, why I really need this feature, too:
https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/default_source_when_turning_on_power
@neil
Of course you are right. I was only happy thats possible to disable the wireless. I still want a deep sleep as you said by scheduler or if cable connected through WoL. And of course it should be possible to have an option per player that allows to disable the wireless automatically if its connected to the ethernet.
Userlevel 2
(Along with Ed, above) I encourage Sonos and Sonos users to look at Apple TV as an example of an always-ready, WiFi multimedia device that uses less than 1W in standby mode. There's no reason my Sonos Connect should use 5-6 Watts in standby mode (I measured using a Kill-a-Watt power meter. My Play:1 also uses 5-6 Watts after being idle 3 minutes, which is more than the 3.4 Watts published by Sonos) https://www.apple.com/environment/reports/docs/AppleTV_Product_Environmental_Report_2012.pdf
The Median number of rooms in a U.S. home is 4 to 6. Five Sonos devices running 5 Watts for 20hrs/day would use roughly 200 kWh per year. At $0.10/kWh, that's $20 a year. NRDC published a related report on the hidden costs to consumers, public health, and the environment of always-on device architecture, called "Lowering the Cost of Play." http://www.nrdc.org/energy/game-consoles/lowering-the-cost-of-play.asp
Certainly, any given user has a choice whether they care about standby power use. But, when the costs are hidden and the manufacturer fails to make simple choices to be more efficient, we all pay the price by more fossil-fueled power plants running around the clock to fuel "energy-stupid" devices.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this. Have you tested the power consumption with wifi off?
Hello Neil, you may like my route around this. I have bought a set of four of the wireless operated mains sockets, they are cheap to buy from B&Q etc. and I have set all four to turn on from the one button on the little wireless transmitter hand unit and there is an off button for the channel or a master off for every thing. Turning them off like this does cause an annoying but short delay when switching on while the Sonos links up all units before it will let you open the Sonos app.
Hi Alan, I. appreciate you taking the time to share that with me, but some of my amps such as my soundbar have mains that are not easily accessible, but again I appreciate the effort. Moreover, why can't sonos put a scheduler in? They have a clock within the setup, it's not a massive leap to move from this to implement a scheduler, in fact it's all incredibly easy. Plus it's sonos doing their bit for the environment, as they shouldn't have devices permanently on.
Userlevel 4
+6
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.
While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.
You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html
This would be ok as a first step, but Sonos must include this idea so the playlist are still available at the next morning (my most liked comment):
https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/default_source_when_turning_on_power
This is the only reason why I can not use switch outlets for all my sonos. My wife would kill me if she needs to use their smartphone to add daily a new radiostation instead of pressing the button on the kitchen player. Because of that I only switch off the secondary players of a set. Example: In my living room I switch off 2x Play 3 and 1x SUB, but the Playbar stays active. By that the playlist is available all the time.. or to say as long we do not have a blackout.
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.
While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.
You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html
Hi Marc, thanks for the like. I do agree keeping the playlists would be useful. However, I would sacrifice the availability of playlists if Sonos use this as a reason not to implement a power scheduler . Hopefully they will do both, but the power scheduler makes such sense, and I can't see why they can't do it, in fact as yet I have been given no reason as to why they can't? Thanks Marc.
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