The time has come, the receiver has died and needs replacing. New receiver with current speakers versus sonsos (beam + x number of one’s) is now the consideration. However, we want to be able to switch on certain preferred radio stations on all speakers at the same time with a physical remote. Preparing for an upcoming switch from home wizard to homey to integrate smart home and homcinema and increasing use of voice control, I tend to sonos provided that the fool proof buttons happen to get resolved.
What are your experiences with the dummy proof control of Sonos using physical buttons or (harmony) remotes?
Can harmony / homey deal with different speaker groups for the music throughout the day and the TV in the evening? When the TV activity on the harmony is started, the radio should stop everywhere and only the beam soundbar should be used for watching TV.
After watching tv is stopped (on the harmony remote) everything should shut down.
The current 2 zone receiver setup makes this possible in perfect harmony with my harmony remote (pun intended) .
usual day:
wake up, start radio in the entire house with prefered radio station
go to work: shut music
come home: again the prefered radio station or a prefered playlist
after dinner: tv, media box etc. on, all other speakers off
go to bed: tv and all speakers off
It works very nice here. With my harmony remote i can switch on the TV or Sonos. With the help off Homey grouping and ungrouping, pause and volume are controlled automatically.
I also use 2 Remotec 8 button switches. Button 3 controls Sonos and will search for a random station. Throughout the week I listen to 7 different radio stations. Every sunday they are randomly defined to a day off the week.
Also when I arrive home Sonos will start automatically playing. But not when it is already playing or the TV Is on.(for this i use a smart plug, that way I know Sonos is playing or being paused, for some reason Sonos does not give its status correctly to Homey.
It works very very nice. But it will take some time to work flawless.
Great to hear that Marcel. Is homey a key instrument in this or would you be able to start playing a preset radio station with just the harmony hub remote on a group of speakers as well?
Also, the case where the music is playing and I start watching tv: would that lead to the music being stopped on all speakers? (I’d like that since the other ‘rooms’ are mostly part of one big kitchen/living area).
Yes Homey is the key instrument. With Harmony you are able to choose 1 preset radio station in 1 activity. so you can make more activities with each another preset radio station but for me that is a bit to much in my Harmony. You are also able to choose different groups off speakers for each activity.
The moment you choose Watching TV you can choose for the Sonos option to automatically leave the group(I have chosen that option). In that case My playbar will leave the groupe. But; the other speakers which were in the group will play on. Homey will pause them.
If you don’t choose this option all speakers will play on with the sound of the TV.
I am getting the feeling that sonos is less suitable and less customisable for the situation in my parents house. Physical buttons, a display and integration with logitech harmony seem far more easy to reach with a new receiver, also the sound quality probably will be better.
Considering buying this one from pioneer with built in google cast link
Related question: when we switch to homey and keep using our harmony remote(s). When I start media through a flow in homey. How does my harmony remote know this has happened and what it needs to control?
Homey can activate any of harmony’s activities, and/or send any of the device’s (seperate) commands that are available with flows, and volume/channel from the GUI itself.
I think what marcel and me are curious for: When we start watching television through homey; How does my harmony remote know it needs to start controlling the channels and volume on the devices belonging to that activity? I would compare it to manually turning on the television, my harmony does not know i did this and therefore can’t be used to switch channels.
Is this different for hamons remotes that work with a hub?
aaah, you don’t have a harmony hub, my bad.
not sure how just the remotes work with Homey unfortunately.
How the hub knows is that it knows which devices are on when a certain activity is active, if you turn on (or off) via separate command, then the harmony hub doesn’t know either, and thus Homey neither.
