Current State of Sonos Integration?

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
#1

I am planning to buy my first Sonos (PLAY:1) speaker, both as the “voice of my smart home” and as a starting point for a future multi-room setup. On the SmartThings side I would like to use it for text-to-speech and/or to play prerecorded sound files based on actions, sensor readings etc.

I know that there are many threads here about Sonos and I have read many of them, but a lot of them are very old (2014/2015) and some users made good, others bad experiences. Before spending 230€ for such a speaker, it would be great to know the current state of the Sonos integration (ideally from Sonos owners).

Are there other speakers that work better (i.e. more reliable) with SmartThinks (e.g. Bose SoundTouch)? What I don’t want is to setup a dedicated Raspberry other something like that with some kind of connected speaker.

Any help or hint is appreciated.

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#2

I’m currently using multiple sonos speakers with SmartThings. I have found that after a notification, if music is playing, the music will not resume 90% of the time. Also the notifications resets speaker settings such as crossfade and shuffle. The apps I’m using have the option to resume music after notification, but hasn’t worked for a while. Sometimes my notifications play twice for some reason. The integration currently is not in official cooperation between Sonos and SmartThings. I have asked in the Sonos Beta Community about official integration with no response from Sonos staff. Although Sonos speakers sound great, they may not be the best option for SmartThings notifications. I haven’t tried any of the speakers that are officially compatible with SmartThings, so hopefully others will chime in.

#3

I have been using Sonos with my ST since the beginning. 3+ years. I currently use BT 2.0 Alpha for notifications and do not have any major issues.

As RightHand mentioned, occasionally the resume music feature will not work properly. However that only happens to me if back to back notifications come through (example door opens/door closes). Therefore I only have door open notifications. Rarely a presence and door open notification will come through and the same thing will happen.

I don’t use groups or crossfade so I don’t have any of those issues.

#4

@greg what exactly is BT 2.0 Alpha???

#5
1 Like
#6

Sorry.

Yes Mike is right. Big Talker 2.0 Alpha

#7

Hey thanks for the clarification.

#8

Might want to check this out if considering Sonos.

#9

Integration is awful. Audio notifications from ST break the current audio stream and there is no way to reset it back. Control through the ST app is laggy. Half the time notifications don’t come through at all.

Big waste of time. It’s really disappointing that ST was directed to shut down the integration because Sonos is a direct competitor of Samsung’s speakers.

3 Likes
#10

So if I use a different sonos speaker for notifications than a running playlist I should be good?

#11

I have 4 Play:1’s all linked to ST.

If you keep any of the speakers just as a solitary (not playing in a pair) then notifications work well.

I have two I like to pair in my kitchen (to be louder than the cooking noises) and they give all sorts of random results when the take a notification. They sometimes pair again just fine and play the last tune again. Sometime only one speaker (always #1) plays but #2 sits like it was told to leave the pair.

The oddest results were from trying to send notifications to both speakers in a pair. Sometimes they would both play (not sync’d - like echoing audio) or the speakers wouldn’t unpair to run the notification audio and 1st received started to play and the second cancelled it.

Final diagnosis - Still buggy as f***

I hear the Bose range integrate much better - never had the pleasure though so I cant comment.

#12

Official integration released. Just got an email about it today.

https://mailchi.mp/smartthings/update-required-new-sonos-integration

#13

Long time ST user, first time Sonos. As with @MarkusJ just trying to make sense of where things stand in simply having a sensor trigger playback of a specific station/channel/playlist in Sonos. No legacy apps here, but the only options I see in Automations > Speaker Companion > is play/stop/pause/skip, notifications, and weather reports. There is no equivalent of the Sonos Mood Music that was mentioned in older posts and the raw code I found online Sonos Mood Music is, not surprisingly, not functioning.

Spent a couple hours installing/configuring the Media Render Events SmartApp as well, but that only appears to link to specific radio subscriptions versus the ones listed inside of the Sonos app.

As of 2019, how are you all managing to trigger specific services from SmartThings on Sonos?

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