NEST Manager by @tonesto7 is an excellent example of an app developer drilling down into the nitty gritty of a Third Party “Thing”.
I, along with many others, I’m sure, would salivate if SONOS also had this same type of granular deep dive.
@MichaelS I’ve been reading your stuff here and it seems like, with your knowledge of Alexa and Google Home, you would be one of the top guys that would know the limits of what’s possible.
I know much of it relies on the API and what SONOS allows, but it’s been a couple years since the ST Labs/SONOS Labs app was made/updated. So I’m just throwing this out there to see what sticks.
Being able to choose songs, shuffle playlists, switch music services, search music, change input, or (un)group would be quite an amazing thing.
I know HOW they work with SmartThings, but unfortunately have no control over these items outside of the API ST provides. Some of what you suggest is possible with a bit of tweaking and coding, however, it would just be a ‘hack’ and would a) not apply to every connected speaker, and b) Would be nullified if SmartThings or Sonos changed their interaction with each other.
The BEST way to do this would be to put in an intermediary device (server/Rasberry Pi) that could serve as the ‘common interface’ between the devices.
Thanks for getting back so quickly! In the back of my mind, I kinda new all this… sigh.
Unrelated to Sonos – In the past, I’ve messed around with Arduinos and ST Shields (with no luck - square peg, round hole) and have looked into setting up a local Android (involves a PC {which I don’t have} and rooting) to serve as a go-between. Each are a ton of work (mainly trying to figure out what went wrong)
I’ll try and dive back into the Android server option
I definitely appreciate your feedback and look forward to trying out Google Home Helper.
Quite honestly all of this might be easier if, as a community, we helped SmartThings understand the need to have a better standard for speakers available to developers.
I second that. How do you think we could get the ball rolling? It’s unfortunate the number of us that would take advantage of this is not an impressive majority, but all things being equal, I’ll still tweet at them.
What’s more important to automate? Light Bulbs? Thermostats? Music? Locks? (Hint: the Answer is - All of the above.)
With more and more integrated products coming to the market, there is more need for better tools to automate with. Google Home and Amazon Echo are proving to be popular and it is fantastic to see them working with Smartthings. These Automated Assistants are making it easy for the casual home owner and their families to interact with their house. My kids ask, “can you tell us a joke”? My wife is alerted when someone enters the house during the day. And I want to save money on my heating and cooling with just a few words “Turn off Nest”. Yet even with all the integration between these voice activated assistants and the home, something is still very lacking.
Speaker Control.
I know there’s a smart app that works with Sonos, but it is very limited. It’s been around since the dawn of ST Hub 1.0 (I should know, I have one). In the beginning, it worked fine. We were able to get our house to play Music or Voice alerts! Whoa! But now, automation has matured to a point that this kind of control is child’s play. Why should we continue reading to candle light, when there’s electricity. Currently, the Sonos Smart App is so toothless that it makes me want to not use ST for interacting with Sonos. It’s a real afterthought.
Its now necessary to bring Speaker Control to full maturity.
I brought up the concern on the community forum about Sonos and in 1 day it has had 92 views. This tells me people are “…OK” with Sonos integration, but would like to see some improvements. There are Smart Apps that get very granular (Nest Manager, CoRE - 2 different apps but very capable and broad). And there are “Things” that we can’t get full access too. Sure there are work arounds to get things moving, but that still doesn’t give you full access.
In the effort to get better control of our home, I’d like to start a discussion on what we can do to move towards getting a better standard for speakers so developers don’t feel like what they write, will just be trashed if any thing changes between ST and Speaker Companies.
Agreed. I tried it and uninstalled it several days later. It could be so much more useful. And I have six Sonos devices in one location and one in the other – with ST hubs, too.
Now we have Alexa in both places, as well. Rumor has it there is a Sonos/Echo integration in our future. That would be awesome!
And negate (for me) the need for ST & Sonos integration. To bad. SmartThings could have had a piece of that action…
Hey Jason. thanks so much for bringing this very thoughtful feedback to us. We’ll definitely pass along the request for improvements to Speaker Control to our development and management teams for you. Advocating for this on the community is also a great way to bring more attention and resources to this request. The best place for discussion with our developers will also be our community, many developer advocates, and developers of ours are involved in the forums.
We really appreciate all your support so far and are very happy to see excitement for the growth of the SmartThings platform!
bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
9
Give this a try. I felt the exact same way… So I matured the TREe little bit. Version 3 is due out soon.