Best practices...

[Rvtravlr]

We use our Sonos speakers primarily for announcements. Typically, we send a TTS to all of our Sonos speakers: $SONOS$ALL$

Tonight we asked a Sonos One (with Alexa) to play some music. Because the last linked group was all, the music played on all Sonos speakers.

Is there a best practice to unlink all? Or should I add this action to my TTS events?

Thanks,

[The Profit]

We use our Sonos speakers primarily for announcements. Typically, we send a TTS to all of our Sonos speakers: $SONOS$ALL$



Tonight we asked a Sonos One (with Alexa) to play some music. Because the last linked group was all, the music played on all Sonos speakers.



Is there a best practice to unlink all? Or should I add this action to my TTS events?



Thanks,

[randy]

We use our Sonos speakers primarily for announcements. Typically, we send a TTS to all of our Sonos speakers: $SONOS$ALL$

Tonight we asked a Sonos One (with Alexa) to play some music. Because the last linked group was all, the music played on all Sonos speakers.

Is there a best practice to unlink all? Or should I add this action to my TTS events?

Thanks,

If I have clients grouped for music, the plug-in will stop the music, ungroup them, then create the linkgroup for the announcement, make the announcement, then return them to the original group and music. If no clients were grouped, they are left ungrouped after the announcement. I would say this works 99 out of 100 times. 1 time out of 100 a couple of clients may remain grouped or the original group and playback is not restored.

I am not sure how Sonos works with Echo, but the plug-in should have returned all clients back to their original state after the last announcement. You would have to watch how the clients behave with the Sonos app on a smartphone or computer. You can watch the grouping in real time.

[dcorsus]

????


The PI puts all players back as they were before the announcement.


If that doesn't work at all, check your firewall settings and make sure the PI has full allowance.


Dirk

[The Profit]

????


The PI puts all players back as they were before the announcement.


If that doesn't work at all, check your firewall settings and make sure the PI has full allowance.


Dirk

[dcorsus]

You might be mis-interpreting the Master device Link-Unlink functions a bit (and I suspect other people as well).

The "Link" and "Unlink" functions actually go hand in hand, in that, if you want to "Unlink" you should have first done a "Link" (in the near past) because the "Unlink" function returns all the players to the state when the "Link" function occurred. This means that when you issue a "Link" command, all state of involved players is stored. So you see if you try "Unlink" and never did a "Link", there is no stored stated to go back to. Moreover if you did a "Link" a few days before and now issue an "Unlink", it might not do what you want it to do.

So think about "Link/Unlink" in the context of the Linkgroups that you have defined. Their usefulness, especially the "Unlink" function is really helpful for shorter timespans. Having that said, nothing prevents you from using the "Link" function to quickly group a few players, set volume and have them play something. I very recently saw a posting by someone that showed many actions in a single event to individually Unlink every player, Link em, set volume etc, whereas this can be done by creating a Linkgroup and just issue an action to "Link" that Linkgroup.

I guess what you want to do is to create an event and use a "Sonos action". Now pick "Unlink" and select the player you want to be removed from some grouping.

[The Profit]

You might be mis-interpreting the Master device Link-Unlink functions a bit (and I suspect other people as well).

The "Link" and "Unlink" functions actually go hand in hand, in that, if you want to "Unlink" you should have first done a "Link" (in the near past) because the "Unlink" function returns all the players to the state when the "Link" function occurred. This means that when you issue a "Link" command, all state of involved players is stored. So you see if you try "Unlink" and never did a "Link", there is no stored stated to go back to. Moreover if you did a "Link" a few days before and now issue an "Unlink", it might not do what you want it to do.

So think about "Link/Unlink" in the context of the Linkgroups that you have defined. Their usefulness, especially the "Unlink" function is really helpful for shorter timespans. Having that said, nothing prevents you from using the "Link" function to quickly group a few players, set volume and have them play something. I very recently saw a posting by someone that showed many actions in a single event to individually Unlink every player, Link em, set volume etc, whereas this can be done by creating a Linkgroup and just issue an action to "Link" that Linkgroup.

I guess what you want to do is to create an event and use a "Sonos action". Now pick "Unlink" and select the player you want to be removed from some grouping.

Yes, I have been mis-interpreting the Link/Unlink functions! So if someone had created a linked group in the Sonos App the night before and then stopped/paused the music, then the next morning we leave the house, if I were to create an event that just unlinks all speakers that aren't needed, then set the one speaker to play would that work? I've attached the event that I am currently using now and then the "Copy" event is what I'm thinking it needs to be?

Thanks for the clarification Dirk!

[dcorsus]

Yes, I have been mis-interpreting the Link/Unlink functions! So if someone had created a linked group in the Sonos App the night before and then stopped/paused the music, then the next morning we leave the house, if I were to create an event that just unlinks all speakers that aren't needed, then set the one speaker to play would that work? I've attached the event that I am currently using now and then the "Copy" event is what I'm thinking it needs to be?

Thanks for the clarification Dirk!

The latter event looks correct, you drop in an "Unlink" action which ensures the player gets removed from any grouping.