Any Sonos pros out there?

[stuckless]

So as an early christmas present I treated myself to a Sonos playbar and a LG oled tv to replace my aging Bose + Panasonic plasma tv. I'm not disappointed as the TV is great and he sound from the playbar is as good or better than the Bose.

In replacing the Bose system, I used to have an old ipod (a really old one) hooked up to play chrstmas music. (In in all fairness that is the only music that is ever played for about 1 month of the year -- and my wife controls that). So, I got rid of that since, I also have a play music subscription and I just mirrored the playlist on it, and things are great... well, except that my wife is not exactly loving how she needs to interact with the system to play music

For me, to go into the app, select the playlist and play, that seems handy enough, but my wife liked the ability to just pick up a remote and hit a button and it would start playing music. So I'm trying to figure out how to get there. Right now my work around is to "hey google, play my christmas music" and that works 50% of the time... the other 50% google just decides to play random christmas music which is not cool (esp for my wife). Once it's plays though, my harmony remote and control the volume, etc, but it would be cool if I could just hit a button, and somehow tell the sonos to play my playlist automatically. So that's my challenge... how do I get it so that my wife can hit a button and just sit there relaxing to christmas music... so i don't have to hear her yelling at google calling it a POS

Thankfully once this season is done... I have 11 months to figure this out

[garbageman]

Since the sonos can be controlled by the harmony remote, is there a way to to set up an activity for a button on the remote which plays the christmas music on the sonos.If you are currently doing it through the google home you should be able to do it through an activity in harmony? I use a harmony hub and alexa to control my fireplace/HD300/tv/satellte box but have not tried using the remote to control my sonos as it is in the kitchen. We just use another echo to control it directly. Hopefully someone else with more experience with this chimes in. I've only just started doing this and am far from being tech savy. I know the harmony app can be frustrating at times.

[tvmaster2]

I was going to ask as well if you had even a cheap, Amazon Alexa Dot. That’s how I made my insanely complicated AV system WAF friendly: “Alexa, turn on Shaw Direct”. Boom, Yamaha receiver turns on, selects correct input, TV turns on, and everything appears. Harmony Skill on the Dot.
I couldn’t find any other way. Since you already have the Harmony, you should be good. Let me know if you need a Dot, I may have a spare since I grabbed an Echo Show on Black Friday, although it’s an American version, which may be a problem as I don’t know how Amazon geo-differentiates their products.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

I was going to ask as well if you had even a cheap, Amazon Alexa Dot. That’s how I made my insanely complicated AV system WAF friendly: “Alexa, turn on Shaw Direct”. Boom, Yamaha receiver turns on, selects correct input, TV turns on, and everything appears. Harmony Skill on the Dot.
I couldn’t find any other way. Since you already have the Harmony, you should be good. Let me know if you need a Dot, I may have a spare since I grabbed an Echo Show on Black Friday, although it’s an American version, which may be a problem as I don’t know how Amazon geo-differentiates their products.

I have a couple of echo dots and google home minis... and I guess I wasn't clear, but currently I do have this working using a google home routine where I can say, "Hey google, play my christmas music" and it plays my "Christmas Songs" playlist from my google play music and sends it to the sonos. The challenge is that if google misunderstands this request, even a little, then I get random christmas music and not my playlist. I have both alexa and google home and so far my experience is that google home understands better, but, neither are great I don't mind, personally, if google gets it wrong... I just tell it to stop, then ask it again, and hopefully it gets it right. But my wife is less forgiving.

While I have the harmony 650s remootes... i don't yet have a hub (apparently that is wrapped until xmas). The 650 series remotes do not have much of an integration with Sonos other than volumn control.

But it sounds hopeful once I get the harmony hub remote and set it up.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

While I have the harmony 650s remootes... i don't yet have a hub (apparently that is wrapped until xmas). The 650 series remotes do not have much of an integration with Sonos other than volumn control.

But it sounds hopeful once I get the harmony hub remote and set it up.

Got it. Nirvana will be closer when the Hub unwraps itself. I still have moments where she has a brain-fart, and when that happens I either say to Alexa “Good Morning”, or “discover devices”, and then she zones back in and starts selecting the right devices. I’m amazed at the ability of the Hub IR to bounce signals around in my stereo cabinet and find a unit, even if there’s no line-of-sight.

[dstanley]

Since I am pretty sure you are using UnRaid and Docker - Checkout the following docker for Sonos:
https://hub.docker.com/r/chrisns/doc...onos-http-api/

Using it you can hit a special URL with any device and it can be set to play a preset to whatever device you choose and set the volume, duration, etc.

I used it with a 'desktop url icon' on iPhone for a while but I also use it in my Home Automation with an ISY994.

Attached is one of my PRESET files that plays my 'Night Music' for sleeping on my Bedroom Sonos, on repeat, at a low volume for 2 hours.
The URL for the iPhone preset was simply:
http://192.168.1.5:5005/bedroom/preset/goodnight

The address is just my UnRaid server running the Sonos Docker in host mode.

[stuckless]

Well that is cool and certainly opens a bunch of possibilities... Never thought to check to see if there was a sonos api

Originally Posted by dstanley

Since I am pretty sure you are using UnRaid and Docker - Checkout the following docker for Sonos:
https://hub.docker.com/r/chrisns/doc...onos-http-api/

Using it you can hit a special URL with any device and it can be set to play a preset to whatever device you choose and set the volume, duration, etc.

I used it with a 'desktop url icon' on iPhone for a while but I also use it in my Home Automation with an ISY994.

Attached is one of my PRESET files that plays my 'Night Music' for sleeping on my Bedroom Sonos, on repeat, at a low volume for 2 hours.
The URL for the iPhone preset was simply:
http://192.168.1.5:5005/bedroom/preset/goodnight

The address is just my UnRaid server running the Sonos Docker in host mode.

[stuckless]

I thought I'd give an update on the "Christmas Music"

So, I unwrapped the Harmony Elite (with hub) and got that set up, but, I was less than impressed at first I've owned harmony remotes for years and I've liked them, and to be fair, I this is great remote, but I had some issues getting everything "talking".

First issue...
- It appears that amazon sent me an open box (I ordered new), and as such, I could not get it be discovered... I ended up having to factory reset the box and then I could set it up.

Second issue...
- It kept losing connection with the nvidia shield. I got it working at one point and then after some minor changes to the button mapping, it suddenly just lost it and the remote kept saying "the hub must be paired" which i had already done. But I've had to unpair and re-pair a few times now.

Third issue...
- The remote could easily find and setup my sonos, but, I couldn't create an activity to play christmas music since it kept saying that I needed to add a playlist to my "favorites" on sonos. The sonos app doesn't have a "favorites". After several hours, I finally installed the sonos dashboard on windows and sure enough there is a "favorites" there. So i added my playlists there and then the remote could start a playlist.

Fourth issue...
- I didn't have my ir blaster positioned well for the TV so tv commands were spotty at best (but that was purely my fault)

So right now it's all working well. Single activity on the remote can start the christmas music playlist and put it on repeat and set the volume correctly. So that's nice.

The irony of course is that I came home yesterday afternoon and the music was going so I excitedly asked my wife if she used the remote, and she said, "No, I just said, 'Hey google, play my christmas music'"

So, right now, I'm pretty happy with the remote + sonos.

[tvmaster2]

So the end result is “hub good”, or “hub bad”....

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

So the end result is “hub good”, or “hub bad”....

I guess like everything.. when it works it's great! when it doesn't it sucks. So I started out with "it sucks", but, I'm pretty happy with it now (since it's working).

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I guess like everything.. when it works it's great! when it doesn't it sucks. So I started out with "it sucks", but, I'm pretty happy with it now (since it's working).

Alot of the problems for tech like the Harmony systems are that the receivers (Roku, Apple TV, Nvidia) are software based, get updates, and then cause problems for the HUB. At the moment, Apple did an update which doesn't allow the HUB to wake it up when you select that profile, so I imagine Harmony will get around to fixing it. Why on earth Apple would change the Wake-Up command is silly?