{"id":1382,"date":"2016-06-26T11:56:09","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T15:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/?p=1382"},"modified":"2017-06-06T08:04:44","modified_gmt":"2017-06-06T12:04:44","slug":"alexa-sonos-smart-things-harmony-oh-my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/26\/alexa-sonos-smart-things-harmony-oh-my\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexa, Sonos, Smart Things, Harmony, Oh My"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I wasn\u2019t invited to the Logitech Harmony Ultimate Alexa beta and I have some concerns about how Sonos activities are going to be handled with respect to Alexa\u2019s voice recognition.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t exactly transparent how to add\/configure the Harmony->Sonos->Smart Things->Alexa routines to start Playlists or Stations from your Sonos favorites after you\u2019ve done an initial setup. You have to roll up your sleeves and get a little dirty.<\/p>\n

When you edit your Sonos favorites in any official Sonos App (add\/remove, etc.) the Harmony App\/Remote doesn\u2019t necessarily reread the Sonos lists. To get a revised Sonos Favorites list to refresh for Harmony, you need to START a Sonos favorite, hit the star key on the bottom of the app, then scroll and hit REFRESH. Then you can edit that activity and select a new channel or add Activities and specify a Sonos favorite from the refreshed, up to date list.<\/p>\n

Below is a screen shot of the first \u201cpage\u201d of (scrollable) activities. The naming convention is something I\u2019m working on, and I\u2019ll explain a little further along in this post. Ideally, I should be able to use the same Activity Name across the board, but this turns out to be problematic and confusing.<\/p>\n

\"harmony\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When you\u2019ve configured and tested your new or edited Activities, next step is to add a Thing to SmartThings. This, too, isn\u2019t intuitive. Select the + on the Things screen on your phone, then Entertainment, Buttons\/remotes. Select Logitech. Your already configured Harmony Hub will appear. Select it, watch the spinning cursor as it refreshes and pulls down your revised, increased list of Harmony Activities. Then select additional activities, watch the cursor spin and the app will populate with the revised list of activities.<\/p>\n

Smart Things insists on adding [Harmony Remote] to the end of activities imported from Harmony; you\u2019ll need to edit them to at least remove the [Harmony Remote]. To edit, tap the activity to open its page and then the gear wheel to edit the name. Here\u2019s where the name game becomes interesting. I\u2019ll come back to this when I\u2019m done explaining the process to get all of this hooked up to Alexa for voice control.<\/p>\n

\"smartthings\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The final step is to access the Smart Home tab in the Alexa Echo app<\/a>. If you have the SmartThings skill enabled, you will need to disable it and then enable it so that it can re-read the list of \u201cThings\u201d. Then you\u2019ll need to re-run Discovery (a pop-up should automatically appear to action this). All of your new activities should now show in the Your Devices list. And you\u2019ll need to do this each and every time you edit or add a \u201cThing\u201d.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a big gotcha to be aware of<\/strong>. You can\u2019t use the Station name\/Playlist Name in your Sonos Favorites<\/span><\/strong>. You can\u2019t use any Artist name or recognizable Playlist Name because Alexa will ignore the SmartThings skill and play music natively on Echo\/Dot.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how I learned what works and what doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I discovered that when I selected an Amazon Playlist named ABBA (or even the Pandora ABBA Station) from Favorites for the channel to play from Sonos on the Harmony Activity named Sonos Music<\/strong> and linked it with SmartThings and enabled Alexa that every single time Alexa played something else named Sonos on the current Sonos speaker (or already grouped speakers). And completely ignored the SmartThings list. When I renamed the \u201cThing\u201d to My Sonos in SmartThings<\/strong> and removed\/re-added the skill in the Alexa App, I had better luck, but only some of the time.<\/p>\n

I similarly had problems with a John Denver and a Judy Collins playlist in Favorites. Alexa consistently ignored the SmartThings skill and played music by (whomever) on the Echo or DOT. .<\/p>\n

After the above limitations sunk in, I decided to try a task based name, Exercise Workout. I set that up and was able to use ANY Sonos favorite without confusing Alexa. So in SmartThings, I currently have Sonos Colorado for John Denver and Sonos Folk for Judy Collins (these work). I\u2019ll have to come up with better, memorable names that are task based.<\/p>\n

So now I\u2019m going to finish the task of renaming activities on the Harmony and in SmartThings to get this Harmony-Sonos-SmartThings-Alexa setup to work 100% of the time. Probably using task based and\/or some other convention that Alexa won\u2019t recognize. If you have any ideas, let me know on Twitter @barbbowman.<\/p>\n

And I hope that the same situation isn\u2019t true with the coming \u201cnative\u201d Alexa support for the Logi Harmony Ultimate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I wasn\u2019t invited to the Logitech Harmony Ultimate Alexa beta and I have some concerns about how Sonos activities are going to be handled with respect to Alexa\u2019s voice recognition. It isn\u2019t exactly transparent how to add\/configure the Harmony->Sonos->Smart Things->Alexa routines to start Playlists or Stations from your Sonos favorites after you\u2019ve done an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[345,330,47],"tags":[335,332,331,304],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":""},"post_excerpt_stackable":"

So I wasn\u2019t invited to the Logitech Harmony Ultimate Alexa beta and I have some concerns about how Sonos activities are going to be handled with respect to Alexa\u2019s voice recognition. It isn\u2019t exactly transparent how to add\/configure the Harmony->Sonos->Smart Things->Alexa routines to start Playlists or Stations from your Sonos favorites after you\u2019ve done an initial setup. You have to roll up your sleeves and get a little dirty. When you edit your Sonos favorites in any official Sonos App (add\/remove, etc.) the Harmony App\/Remote doesn\u2019t necessarily reread the Sonos lists. To get a revised Sonos Favorites list to refresh…<\/p>\n","category_list":"Alexa<\/a>, Amazon Echo<\/a>, Connected Home<\/a>","author_info":{"name":"Barb","url":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/author\/barb\/"},"comments_num":"0 comments","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pvFKI-mi","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmediaphile.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}