Sonos EOL - Well that wasn't handled very well . . .

[Teken]

I thought it was pretty interesting how Sono's initially pushed out the news that legacy devices would be EOL. Along with how they were intending to address the upgrade / recycle program for those using older legacy devices: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/23/21079269/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-apology-legacy-products-software-updates

There was an initial article that pretty much stated the sky was falling and I had to laugh given all of the misinformation presented. This isn't the article but it does offer insight as to what Sonos intended to do with the legacy devices and what they thought would be the path going forward ~ before the so called outrage: https://www.fastcompany.com/90454672/this-is-disgusting-angry-sonos-customers-are-calling-for-a-boycott

For those using Sonos was this a big deal?!? 

[simplextech]

7 minutes ago, Teken said:

I thought it was pretty interesting how Sono's initially pushed out the news that legacy devices would be EOL. Along with how they were intending to address the upgrade / recycle program for those using older legacy devices: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/23/21079269/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-apology-legacy-products-software-updates

There was an initial article that pretty much stated the sky was falling and I had to laugh given all of the misinformation presented. This isn't the article but it does offer insight as to what Sonos intended to do with the legacy devices and what they thought would be the path going forward ~ before the so called outrage: https://www.fastcompany.com/90454672/this-is-disgusting-angry-sonos-customers-are-calling-for-a-boycott

For those using Sonos was this a big deal?!? 

Huh what?  Something happened where all Sonos players just spontaneously started playing Britney Spear's... what?????

It was hyped news to begin with.  Device's that are more software than they are hardware must be EOL at some point as the initial hardware they were built on can't handle the new features being added to them from... USER REQUESTS and DEMAND for said features.  I see one issue with the legacy + modern in the same system being features wouldn't be the same so user experience/functionality would end up being bad.

[Teken]

1 minute ago, simplextech said:

Huh what?  Something happened where all Sonos players just spontaneously started playing Britney Spear's... what?????

It was hyped news to begin with.  Device's that are more software than they are hardware must be EOL at some point as the initial hardware they were built on can't handle the new features being added to them from... USER REQUESTS and DEMAND for said features.  I see one issue with the legacy + modern in the same system being features wouldn't be the same so user experience/functionality would end up being bad.

I guess what didn't come across to me was how come Sono's decided to light themselves on fire for no good reason?!? Anyone who has owned a computer system knows as applications become more demanding things change and that 1980, 1990, 2000, hardware will fall behind or not be able to support the latest & greatest. I believe like you when you make something all computerized unless the vendor has built the device with so much forethought and over built.

It's just a matter of time before the latest and greatest won't be supported.

Having said this, I don't subscribe to the notion said device should just automagically stop working! The whole lets brick your old hardware for the upgrade program was really funny to read because any sane person was just gong to light on fire. 

LOL ~ Let games begin . . .  

[simplextech]

3 minutes ago, Teken said:

I don't subscribe to the notion said device should just automagically stop working! The whole lets brick your old hardware for the upgrade program was really funny to read because any sane person was just gong to light on fire. 

This was in many ways dumb... however in some ways kinda required.  As the older Sonos Players would not receive software updates and would no longer actually work because the software didn't support them this was a I think a badly implemented safety *idea* to protect unsuspecting people from buying older used Sonos equipment?  Maybe?

[Teken]

22 minutes ago, simplextech said:

This was in many ways dumb... however in some ways kinda required.  As the older Sonos Players would not receive software updates and would no longer actually work because the software didn't support them this was a I think a badly implemented safety *idea* to protect unsuspecting people from buying older used Sonos equipment?  Maybe?

I don't own any Sonos hardware so apologize if I don't have the full picture so bare with me. 

- Legacy: Said device today works just fine with newer hardware. What more do you need for these speakers to work? I mean as far as I am aware the systems all play, stop, pause, FF / RW, connect to almost every known online media service like Spotify etc.

I guess the whole patching was kind of lost on me as to what exactly are you patching on these devices?!? It's a freaking speaker which has been out for years so it must be finalized now ~ no?!?

[mwester]

The technical issues, and the general business issue are all valid -- at some point, those old devices are just impractical to continue to support.  I've only one device that's affected, which I may replace, or I may discard, or I may keep all my units at the same version and continue using the Sonos exactly as it works today.

Where it all went sideways was the manner in which this was presented.  It started with an alarming email subject line, and continued to dig the hole deeper by doing a very poor job of explaining the technical issue as well as what Sonos was planning to do.  The funny thing is that the "We screwed up" email that followed a day later from Sonos didn't really change much in terms of their plans -- it mainly clarified them (the only addition was that they committed to security patches for an unspecified period of time).  That the follow-on email seemed to placate so many just highlights how awful the first email was.

(For the curious, the root technical issue is that the affected units have very little flash memory and RAM (e.g. 32MB -- that's MB, not GB! -- of flash for program space, and 32MB of RAM) -- the newer units range from 64MB to as large as 256MB.  Since Sonos operates as a mesh where any player in the network can operate as a "master", there's simply no provision in the protocol for a device that can't do everything in the Sonos protocol -- which means it's not possible for the older units to operate in a "works great but needs another newer device to do the streaming from new online streaming services".  Sonos' solution is simple: if you elect to keep the old small-memory devices in your network, you'll need to make sure that none of your other devices are any newer than the old ones, so that they all remain capable of the same set of features.  They completely failed to get that message conveyed in the original email, which is what hacked off so many of the users.)

[Teken]

18 minutes ago, mwester said:

The technical issues, and the general business issue are all valid -- at some point, those old devices are just impractical to continue to support.  I've only one device that's affected, which I may replace, or I may discard, or I may keep all my units at the same version and continue using the Sonos exactly as it works today.

Where it all went sideways was the manner in which this was presented.  It started with an alarming email subject line, and continued to dig the hole deeper by doing a very poor job of explaining the technical issue as well as what Sonos was planning to do.  The funny thing is that the "We screwed up" email that followed a day later from Sonos didn't really change much in terms of their plans -- it mainly clarified them (the only addition was that they committed to security patches for an unspecified period of time).  That the follow-on email seemed to placate so many just highlights how awful the first email was.

(For the curious, the root technical issue is that the affected units have very little flash memory and RAM (e.g. 32MB -- that's MB, not GB! -- of flash for program space, and 32MB of RAM) -- the newer units range from 64MB to as large as 256MB.  Since Sonos operates as a mesh where any player in the network can operate as a "master", there's simply no provision in the protocol for a device that can't do everything in the Sonos protocol -- which means it's not possible for the older units to operate in a "works great but needs another newer device to do the streaming from new online streaming services".  Sonos' solution is simple: if you elect to keep the old small-memory devices in your network, you'll need to make sure that none of your other devices are any newer than the old ones, so that they all remain capable of the same set of features.  They completely failed to get that message conveyed in the original email, which is what hacked off so many of the users.)

Appreciate the quick summary and affirms what I have read thus far. But, lets be even clearer for those not in the know. As of now all of these so called legacy speakers connect and operate fine ~ Yes?

If, so what is a perfect example of a patch / upgrade to these systems?

[Bumbershoot]

56 minutes ago, Teken said:

For those using Sonos was this a big deal?!?

I have a couple of speakers that are going to be EOL, and they work just fine for what they do.  No, I don't want to replace them necessarily, but I'm lucky in that I have a place to continue using them if I do (actually, I think I'll put them on a separate vlan).  I'm already a bit vulnerable with these speakers, as I can't use the TTS features that @simplextech put into his nodeserver with these critters -- I have to use the Jishi api node.js server to get them to speak. Who knows if/when that will go away.  At that point, I'll be happy to get rid of them, as TTS is an important use case for these.

I don't like spending money on new things when the old things still work, however that doesn't stop me from spending money on new golf clubs or skis, or keep my wife from wanting a new car (I'll keep my old pickup truck until I die...).  I'll probably start saving my $$$ for some shiny new Sonos speakers -- even though I understand their limitations, cost, etc.

[Teken]

2 minutes ago, Bumbershoot said:

I have a couple of speakers that are going to be EOL, and they work just fine for what they do.  No, I don't want to replace them necessarily, but I'm lucky in that I have a place to continue using them if I do (actually, I think I'll put them on a separate vlan).  I'm already a bit vulnerable with these speakers, as I can't use the TTS features that @simplextech put into his nodeserver with these critters -- I have to use the Jishi api node.js server to get them to speak. Who knows if/when that will go away.  At that point, I'll be happy to get rid of them, as TTS is an important use case for these.

I don't like spending money on new things when the old things still work, however that doesn't stop me from spending money on new golf clubs or skis, or keep my wife from wanting a new car (I'll keep my old pickup truck until I die...).  I'll probably start saving my $$$ for some shiny new Sonos speakers -- even though I understand their limitations, cost, etc.

Well, (TTS) that was a big one I didn't realize wasn't supported in the older legacy hardware! 

[Bumbershoot]

Just now, Teken said:

Well, (TTS) that was a big one I didn't realize wasn't supported in the older legacy hardware! 

It is supported, and nicely so, with this: http://jishi.github.io/node-sonos-http-api/

I use it all the time through network resources.

@simplextech wrote a nodeserver that uses a differing method for delivering TTS, one that requires newer hardware that what I posses.

[Teken]

1 minute ago, Bumbershoot said:

It is supported, and nicely so, with this: http://jishi.github.io/node-sonos-http-api/

I use it all the time through network resources.

@simplextech wrote a nodeserver that uses a differing method for delivering TTS, one that requires newer hardware that what I posses.

Yes, I meant to say the older legacy hardware relied upon NS which I am trying to reduce & limit. Given the big push to the Polyisy for Node Servers it only made sense utilization the latest and greatest method to invoke TTS through the Sonos speaker system.

[simplextech]

2 minutes ago, Bumbershoot said:

It is supported, and nicely so, with this: http://jishi.github.io/node-sonos-http-api/

I use it all the time through network resources.

@simplextech wrote a nodeserver that uses a differing method for delivering TTS, one that requires newer hardware that what I posses.

The Jishi API is very good and I used it for sending TTS and it's also a very good introspective/debug tool for Sonos speakers so I still keep it around.  There are two ways of doing TTS with Sonos.

1. Is to push an audio file (mp3/wav) directly to a speaker.  This is how Jishi does it.  It takes the phrase in the url you send and uses Amazon/Google/VoiceRSS whatever you configured to generate the audio file and then it pushes the audio file directly to the speaker.  The downside to this is it will stop whatever was playing and play the message and then end.  It does not resume playing of previous streams and can't for online streams.

2. Using the audioClip API which is available on newer speakers.  The audioClip API does essentially the same thing as a third party is used to generate the mp3 file and then the audioClip API sends that file to the speaker.  The difference is that the audioClip API does not stop/pause/interrupt whatever is currently playing.  It instead backgrounds that "stream" volume and plays your message and afterwards returns the previous stream to previous volume.  Very nice and clean.  Downside it's only supported on newer players and requires use of the cloud API for now.  I'm hopeful Sonos will get their act together and provide a nicer local API rather than having to piece together bits and pieces through discovery.

[mwester]

13 minutes ago, Teken said:

Appreciate the quick summary and affirms what I have read thus far. But, lets be even clearer for those not in the know. As of now all of these so called legacy speakers connect and operate fine ~ Yes?

If, so what is a perfect example of a patch / upgrade to these systems?

Consider the case where an online streaming service (e.g. Pandora) updates their site's authentication protocol.  Or perhaps they switch to the absolute latest-and-greatest audio codec.  Sonos would have to update their speakers' firmware in order to accommodate this change.  Because the online services change authentication and streaming protocols so often, plus the need for general security fixes, and new Sonos device support, there are Sonos updates frequently.  I've not kept track of it, but I'd say seldom does a month go by where there isn't an update of some sort.

Since the older speakers lack the firmware space, or perhaps the memory space, to do this, it wouldn't be possible to have those old speakers continue to support Pandora in this example.  But, since the speakers are a mesh, there's no way in the protocol for the old speakers to (for example) ask for a newer speaker to handle the Pandora authentication and codec work for it (which is the obvious technical solution) -- that leaves only two other choices: one being to leave all the speakers at the older version, in which case none of them can play the new Pandora, or to split the old and new speakers into separate "meshes" so that no speaker will ever be asked to do some task it lacks the code to do.

[Teken]

Thanks to everyone for their insight and offering more clarity to the topic at hand. I raised this because forever and a day have sat on the fence about buying Sonos. It really came down to deciding is it better to go the route of a whole home audio / PA system.

Or go the route of the Sonos ecosystem  . . .

Like many here, lots of these purchases are either spur of the moment vs well thought out and planned. I also wanted the cleanest direct method to integrate TTS into the infrastructure with as little dependencies on the cloud. Regardless, I still see great value in being able to push voice through Alexa / Google as it doesn't require the ongoing task of capturing predefined canned phrases.

At this juncture the scale is tipping toward a whole home distributed audio system . . .

[simplextech]

4 minutes ago, Teken said:

Thanks to everyone for their insight and offering more clarity to the topic at hand. I raised this because forever and a day have sat on the fence about buying Sonos. It really came down to deciding is it better to go the route of a whole home audio / PA system.

Or go the route of the Sonos ecosystem  . . .

Like many here, lots of these purchases are either spur of the moment vs well thought out and planned. I also wanted the cleanest direct method to integrate TTS into the infrastructure with as little dependencies on the cloud. Regardless, I still see great value in being able to push voice through Alexa / Google as it doesn't require the ongoing task of capturing predefined canned phrases.

At this juncture the scale is tipping toward a whole home distributed audio system . . .

It comes down to cost and preference.  I went Sonos to develop the Nodeserver and it's a good system.  Sonos however has and continues to make changes and is becoming more and more cloud dependent every software release....with that I'm really liking the Denon Heos systems and thinking I may in the future want to go that route.  If I wanted a full blown whole house solution I would probably go with Russound as there are integrations for all major systems already. 

As you know but I'll repeat...One thing for sure is picking a system, whatever it may be that is compatible with whatever home automation you're using today and might use in the future. 

[Teken]

59 minutes ago, simplextech said:

It comes down to cost and preference.  I went Sonos to develop the Nodeserver and it's a good system.  Sonos however has and continues to make changes and is becoming more and more cloud dependent every software release....with that I'm really liking the Denon Heos systems and thinking I may in the future want to go that route.  If I wanted a full blown whole house solution I would probably go with Russound as there are integrations for all major systems already. 

As you know but I'll repeat...One thing for sure is picking a system, whatever it may be that is compatible with whatever home automation you're using today and might use in the future. 

Yes, the Denon system is another one I considered early on but the initial outlay in cash was too much given how many zones I needed.

[simplextech]

56 minutes ago, Teken said:

initial outlay in cash was too much

Ohh the problem we all face

 

[Teken]

6 minutes ago, simplextech said:

Ohh the problem we all face

 

LOL ~ I know all of these first world problems we face!  Costco has the little square Sonos on sale right now and this is what reminded me about the hub bub email received by existing users. With respect to your Node Server what does it offer in terms of access and control? If you have a moment to screen capture the control panel that would give me a good insight as to what I've been missing all of these years!  

[simplextech]

1 hour ago, Teken said:

LOL ~ I know all of these first world problems we face!  Costco has the little square Sonos on sale right now and this is what reminded me about the hub bub email received by existing users. With respect to your Node Server what does it offer in terms of access and control? If you have a moment to screen capture the control panel that would give me a good insight as to what I've been missing all of these years!  

Screenshot of the node control or of Sonos desktop app?  The mobile app is actually where the majority of configuration and intended use case is with Sonos which I again don't care much for I prefer using the desktop.  The mobile app is only good for me on a tablet as I really hate using my phone for much anyways.

The nodeserver provides basics based on limitations of the Sonos API and of the Admin Console limits.  So volume control of a group or individual player.  Play a favorite from your Sonos favorites list or Playlist from Sonos playlist and if setup use of VoiceRSS to send a TTS message to a designated player.  The TTS must be setup in advance and admin console refreshed to re-read the profile same for playlists and favorites.  The nodeserver pulls the playlists and favorites from what you save in the Sonos app so you can add/change adjust from the app and those changes are available.  So for a playlist if you leave the same name/structure and just add/remove songs then you don't have to do a refresh as the pointer is still valid.