I’ve had my Sonos (all Play:1’s - not the new system) setup integrated with ST and (semi)controllable with Echo for a few years now. Back in the day… before Sonos official integrations, when Echo was on Gen.1, when Yonami and Stringify were ‘a thing’, and IFTTT was practically the only way to get stuff done. I literally have no clue how my integration is being accomplished now, but it’s always worked solidly. I checked- I do NOT have a Sonos SmartApp or DH installed, and I’m on ST Classic 2.17.1
FFwd to today- I want to change my connections to whatever is the best integration, because:
I have no way to control Sonos volume via Alexa (I can do many other things including pause, repeat, Amazon Music playlists, etc). She ignores all volume commands.
Very annoying that I need to say “Alexa, Play -My Life- by Billy Joel on {SpeakerName} Sonos” rather than on a ‘Group’ of speakers. I also cannot Group or Ungroup via Alexa.
Ultimate most annoying… Any command given to any of my 8 Echo devices will temporarily dramatically drop the Sonos volume in the whole house for ~10 seconds. Imagine, unwinding in the Living Room with a glass of wine, and your kid doing homework upstairs asks Alexa what 18 plus 4 equals… and my music is affected for 10 secs.
So what’s the better/best way to integrate? Note that all of my automations are in webCoRE, so whatever I do has to work there. Thanks for any help!
UPDATE: I found that I do have the Sonos skill enabled/linked within Alexa app. The skill says it’s supposed to be able to handle volume, but mine doesn’t. What else can I look at/into? Thx
Sonos calls this “ducking,” the period when it drops speaker volume so Alexa can hear what you’re saying.
The request to identify the particular Echo device that is handling your command and drop the volume only on the nearest device(s) was repeatedly asked for during Beta. For whatever reason, Sonos didn’t implement that request. It also annoys me!
@Barkis, thanks… I also asked the question in a FB group, and you’re gonna LOVE this solution, which I’ve now tried and it’s BEAUTIFUL!!
The ‘ducking’ was discussed earlier today in the uk group. _ Here’s a summary: “The Sonos skill says “Each time an Alexa input device hears the wake word (“Alexa”), the volume will be lowered on all Sonos speakers in the home so the question can be heard and you can understand the response”… and this is because Alexa isn’t room aware… it doesn’t know where the speakers are in relation to the Echo device, so it lowers the volume of all of them just in case any one of the Echo devices has a Sonos speaker near it. The solution seems to be to create a group and add your echo and co-located sonos speaker to the group, and make the Sonos the preferred speaker for the group. This will make the speaker only dip when you say the wake word on the echo in the group. By placing the Echo device in a group with the Sonos you are making Alexa room aware… telling it which Echo device is near the Sonos speaker… and so it’ll only dip the sound on the Sonos when the Echo device near it is spoken to!”
I hope I’ve cut and pasted the various comments so that it makes some sort of sense…
Yeah I just found this on the Sonos Community too. I was researching as I noticed my whole house ducking had stopped and I was looking for the reason. I had created a preferred speaker in each of my Alexa groups not knowing a side affect would be a fix to the whole house ducking! Happy camper here.
I use this Webcore Piston to ask alexa to turn up or down the volume on my sonos speakers that are playing at the time. It can determine which ones are grouped and turn them all down. Works great!
