Remotely reboot a SONOS device

[X10Ben]

Hi,

Is it possible to remotely reboot a SONOS device?

If it is, could this be a feature request please?

Thanks

[bphillips]

While I don't think the plugin has this functionality, you can find the IP address of the Sonos player on your network and trigger an immediate reboot by going to this URL:

http://<sonos_ip>:1400/reboot

[upstatemike]

While I don't think the plugin has this functionality, you can find the IP address of the Sonos player on your network and trigger an immediate reboot by going to this URL:

http://<sonos_ip>:1400/reboot

Is this still supported in the current Sonos firmware version?

[drparker151]

If the Sonos has locked up it might not respond to the command. Fool proof would be to use a z-wave outlet you can power cycle.

[jbbtex]

Is this still supported in the current Sonos firmware version?

I don't believe it is.

[brientim]

I know that in the Sonos forum they were asking for it to be reinstated as it had been removed.

[X10Ben]

If the Sonos has locked up it might not respond to the command. Fool proof would be to use a z-wave outlet you can power cycle.

That's what I've done now …. and typically not needed to use them in anger yet :-)

[dcorsus]

Curious why you would need to reboot players on a periodic basis? I have many and for many years, I've never ever had to reboot one. I suspect if they become unresponsive, there is a network issue hiding and they just become unreachable. There are a few here on the forum who know a lot about troubleshooting network issues with Sonos. Care to go into detail what is happening, when, which players, how your network is built?
Happy to assist,
Dirk

[upstatemike]

Curious why you would need to reboot players on a periodic basis? I have many and for many years, I've never ever had to reboot one. I suspect if they become unresponsive, there is a network issue hiding and they just become unreachable. There are a few here on the forum who know a lot about troubleshooting network issues with Sonos. Care to go into detail what is happening, when, which players, how your network is built?
Happy to assist,
Dirk

I am using Sonsnet with all IP addresses reserved and yet still occasionally have issues that require a power cycle to resolve. Usually a player will disappear or be unresponsive to configuration from within the Sonos controller. I don't think the root cause is networking but rather a glitch or lockup within the Sonos Player. I only use ZP90 (Connect) and ZP120 (Connect Amp) units so maybe the issues are limited to those models.

[X10Ben]

I'm hoping my issues are behind me now as we've had a lot of renovation work going on where the electricity was turned off many, many times. To have a clean startup I generally need to power up devices such as my managed switch in a certain order. Plus I wasn't always at home when this was done.

I have a Play One powered from above in the loft/attic space. If it threw a tizzy I had to get the step ladder out and get in the loft space and power cycle (which was easier than pulling the chord out of the unit as that was a very snug fit)

Its on a Z-WAVE plugin module now, so no issue when it (if it) happens again.

[dcorsus]

Gotcha on not wanting to crawl into loft space all the time ...

If you do want to get an idea about the quality of your Sonos network, pick any player's IP address and substitute the xxxx in this URL http://xx.xx.xx.xx:1400/support/review with your IP address, wait until you see the result, click on Network Matrix. If you see a lot of red your network need some TLC.
To upstatemike : what you describe still smells almost 100% network (config) issues. There have been some excellent postings on this forum about config settings, in general they come down to:

1) wireless interference gets resolved by picking other channels on Sonosnet or on other (competing) wifi networks in the house. The URL and displaying of the network matrix appears the best way to get on top of things
2) Mix of wired versus wireline connected players. A few users have empirically shown that the best way is to wired connect only ONE player (or Sonos Boost) and let SonosNet do its thing
3) Broadcasting/Multicasting issues: I struggled with this myself for quite a while, this shows itself when you have managed switches in your network and really depends on the functions of the switch whether you should enable IGMP snooping or turn it all off. In home networks, I would recommend you turn snooping off, there isn't that much to be saved to "optimize" multicasting to (only) subscribed ports as opposed to replicate it over all ports.

Dirk

[upstatemike]

Gotcha on not wanting to crawl into loft space all the time ...

If you do want to get an idea about the quality of your Sonos network, pick any player's IP address and substitute the xxxx in this URL http://xx.xx.xx.xx:1400/support/review with your IP address, wait until you see the result, click on Network Matrix. If you see a lot of red your network need some TLC.
To upstatemike : what you describe still smells almost 100% network (config) issues. There have been some excellent postings on this forum about config settings, in general they come down to:

1) wireless interference gets resolved by picking other channels on Sonosnet or on other (competing) wifi networks in the house. The URL and displaying of the network matrix appears the best way to get on top of things
2) Mix of wired versus wireline connected players. A few users have empirically shown that the best way is to wired connect only ONE player (or Sonos Boost) and let SonosNet do its thing
3) Broadcasting/Multicasting issues: I struggled with this myself for quite a while, this shows itself when you have managed switches in your network and really depends on the functions of the switch whether you should enable IGMP snooping or turn it all off. In home networks, I would recommend you turn snooping off, there isn't that much to be saved to "optimize" multicasting to (only) subscribed ports as opposed to replicate it over all ports.

Dirk

Maybe you are right but with over 100 network devices at this point and mostly all live 24/7 I feel I need to push back on Sonos a little bit on being so sensitive to network environment realities. There are only 3 non-overlapping 2.4GHz channels available and if you use 2 in alternation to space out your wireless access points and one for Sonosnet you don't have much of anyplace left to go to get away from interference. Agree on a single wired connection unless you have players beyond Sonosnet range and I have avoided going to managed switches specifically to avoid causing Sonos issues. I don't see network congestion improving anytime soon so I hope Sonos plans to find ways for their stuff to get along better in an increasingly congested Wi-Fi environment.

[dcorsus]

Maybe you are right but with over 100 network devices at this point and mostly all live 24/7 I feel I need to push back on Sonos a little bit on being so sensitive to network environment realities. There are only 3 non-overlapping 2.4GHz channels available and if you use 2 in alternation to space out your wireless access points and one for Sonosnet you don't have much of anyplace left to go to get away from interference. Agree on a single wired connection unless you have players beyond Sonosnet range and I have avoided going to managed switches specifically to avoid causing Sonos issues. I don't see network congestion improving anytime soon so I hope Sonos plans to find ways for their stuff to get along better in an increasingly congested Wi-Fi environment.

I'm not trying to sound argumentative here but I'm trying to make a point to user who have issues that doing low-latency-synchronized-streaming applications over wireless is a lot harder then just some non-latency sensitive data. I don't believe Sonos is more fickle or "needs to play nicer", the application they support is just a lot more demanding and therefore you may have to give a bit more TLC than your average other app. If you do synchronized audio streaming over a network, newer technologies like MIMO are at times the problem rather than the solution because they were designed around bursty clients as opposed to always transmitting/receiving clients.

A problem that I do agree with is that Sonos implemented a full mesh approach from day one, which means that any device communicates with any other device so traffic between players scales exponentially. So any event from one player gets transmitted through TCP to all other players. I believe that is one of the reasons, perhaps the biggest reason why Sonos only allows 32 players in a single network. Moreover, to support this mesh, Sonos relied on basic networking principles where players are like switches, so they can forward traffic. You have to give it to them, they do something for over a decade that WAPs today are trying to do (built a mesh and forward or repeat between APS). This strength is at times also their weakness because it requires a 100% properly functioning Spanning Tree and you'll find a lot of postings about Sonos issues around the fact that installations done by us end-users violate the principles that all IT-Networking people learn day one of networking. I actually believe that the reason why most folks suggest you have only one ingress/egress point into the Sonos network is exactly because of (R)STP CONFIG issues. I'm also pretty sure that (at least the earlier devices) forwarded traffic in SW, so any network loop would indeed cause players to crash and restart.

Anyway, my point being, Sonos does need some more TLC because the real-time behavior is more demanding than a lot of other things, less so because their SW or HW is inferior, to the contrary, I would argue it is pretty robust all around. Because they can forward traffic, having a weak link somewhere might cause the occasional drop of a player or sometimes isolation from the group.

Dirk.
disclaimer: I have ZERO relationship with Sonos, just love their product, have them for a decade, have all models except for ZP80 and PlayBase

[harvito]

I have been using SONOS speakers for many years - yes at one time it was difficult to find the sweet spot but these days they all seem to just run. Once the boost came out Vs the bridge things improved - then they introduced the ability to utilize your existing wireless network - mind you I have always used the SONOSNET except when I was beta testing the wireless implementation. I retired my boost and stuck with most speakers being wired when I could and never had issues - I run in two houses - the one in AZ I now use a boost as it is an apartment and I don't have the ability to run able everywhere. The boost works great - The larger the home the more complex things get (obviously) - I just sold a 2000 SQ foot home - okay not huge as in mansion - but I had speakers on the first floor, second floor, basement, garage, and deck area - they were rock solid - SONOS did mesh before mesh was 'the thing' - Great company - Great speakers - Anyway, I agree with @dcorus - SOLID product - I too have no relationship - Buy BOSE and expect no updates within a year - buy SONOS (I have 7 year old speakers) they still get updates and still get better - Now they have in ceiling speakers so no more need to run wires from SONOS amps through the walls. I could go on and on --- I'll shut up now

[paul]

So, to go back closer to the root of the Original Poster's question, I'm also interested in reboots. Will likely need to use a z-wave adapter for now. I've been having issues where periodically Homeseer will stop communicating with individual speakers. I suspect that something has changed, either in the Sonos firmware or in the Plugin, because for years I had rock solid connectivity between Sonos and Homeseer, but in the last 6 months it's been more flakey. Every once in awhile a speaker just *stops* communicating with HS, but is still working fine in the Sonos UI.

Sometimes it will be that HS cannot control Sonos (ie. play a song or change volume, but Sonos doesn't respond). Sometimes it will be that HS will stop picking up Sonos changes (ie. triggering an event based on a specific song starting on the speaker). Sometimes both. In either case, if it happens, the only fix is to power cycle the individual speaker. Once it comes back and re-registers itself, all communication is restored. The issue seems to be tied to individual speakers - as in, Speaker A might stop working, but Speaker B still works, or vice versa.

In all cases, the speakers still appear, and work fine, with the Sonos App.

Perhaps I'm taking another tangent rather than really getting back to the OPs question, but being able to remotely reboot my speakers would of course help me manage this issue. Ideally though, if I could resolve the root issue then reboots would no longer be necessary.....

regards,

Paul