Sonos Play 1 - iPhone Hotspot ?

  • 3 July 2015
  • 6 replies
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Me and a friend are interested in play 1 devices. We were blown away in a demo today in store but if we go camping for example where there is no wifi router, could the Sonos be configured to connect to a iPhone Hot spot and play music (assuming there is power) ? Is this possible somehow either playing music from an iPhone or iPad over a hotspot on the device straight to the Sonos without a router ?

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6 replies

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Hi Toby,

A hotspot setup would not be ideal and is not recommended due to data and bandwidth requirements. If you own an Android device in some cases you could connect directly to your PLAY:1's local wireless network and stream local music files from the device to the player.

Alternatively a single PLAY:5 can be used without Internet by taking advantage of the Line-In port. Unfortunately the PLAY:1 does not have this capability and will not be usable without a wireless network.

You are welcome to try the hotspot setup yourself but do remember it is not a recommended setup and may yield undesirable results.

You may also want to take a look at this older thread which is a very similar topic except in regards to a PLAY:5https://ask.sonos.com...

Here is a key point that I found on the topic from an employee on that link:
"In order for a device to control Sonos, it must be connected to the same local area network as the Sonos device. The phone is providing the local area network right now for other devices, so while it's still connecting to the Internet, it can't join its own wireless network in order to control Sonos."
I hope this is insightful and helps you with your experience.

Best regards!
You could take along an old router and use the LAN it generates.  It doesn't have to be connected to the internet to play local content, such as that stored on a phone.
You need to think of your iPhone as the wireless route. If you have one iPhone - or Android, creating a hotspot. The speaker and any controlling device needs to connect to that network. So an iPad or Android device with the Sonos player on it.

Make sense. You can't use the device that is making the network control the speaker.
This could be easily done with the Sonos dock - I think it can still be done with an adapter cable to connect the iPhone to the dock connector on the dock.

IMO, the Sonos dock is a nifty little device that got washed away because of Apple's antics.
We have no wired internet to our house only. cell phone hot spots


http://www.tp-link.com/us/. Bought on amazon

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TQEX8BO/ref=twister_B07112ZY5N?_encoding=UTF8&th=1


Took this unit plugged into wan on router, it picks up the Mobile hot spot on the phone Which in turn completes the circle for the sonos to update and work!
Hi Toby,

A hotspot setup would not be ideal and is not recommended due to data and bandwidth requirements.
...
Here is a key point that I found on the topic from an employee on that link:
"In order for a device to control Sonos, it must be connected to the same local area network as the Sonos device. The phone is providing the local area network right now for other devices, so while it's still connecting to the Internet, it can't join its own wireless network in order to control Sonos."
I hope this is insightful and helps you with your experience.

Best regards!


Yes you were right, but it was few years ago ! Today many mobile has a 4G (and soon 5G) connection so bandwidth is not a problem. Since 1 year I have no internet connection except my mobile hotspot and I am able to control my Sonos players (but with another phone or laptop).

Concerning the key point from an employee
Hi Toby,
...
Here is a key point that I found on the topic from an employee on that link:
"In order for a device to control Sonos, it must be connected to the same local area network as the Sonos device. The phone is providing the local area network right now for other devices, so while it's still connecting to the Internet, it can't join its own wireless network in order to control Sonos."
I hope this is insightful and helps you with your experience.

Best regards!


I created a ticket for Sonos developers: being able to control a Sonos system with my mobile even if players are connected to internet through my mobile hotspot. I don't know why they don't have yet developed this feature.

When a mobile is used as a hotspot the mobile has 2 network interfaces:
- the first one for internet
- the second one for its local network
2 network interfaces means 2 IP addresses (on Android the default IP address is 192.168.43.1 and Sonos players connected to this hotspot has an IP address with value 192.168.43.x). So the controller should be able to communicate with Sonos players.

I'm a developer so I've started to develop an unofficial application for Android and iPhone which is able to control Sonos players even if using mobile hospot as Wifi router.

Stay tuned