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Saving Power - Connect Sonos to WeMo - Possible?


blub

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Hi

 

Since the Sonos Play's are always on and draw quite some power (4w 24/7)  I am asking myself if they could be used in conjunction with WeMo's.

 

Of course plugging the Sonos in a WeMo and turning it on via a Custom Button is possible it is not the solution I am looking for.

 

What I am looking for is way to turn on the WeMo when the room turns on or the Sonos is selected for playing media automatically - ideally so that C4 turns on the WeMo first, then waits X seconds for the device to boot up and then initiating the commands to play the media.

 

Can that be done?

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As far as I could see it when the Sonos was setup it was not possible to make a connection from Sonos to the WeMo in Composer Pro (I asked during setup).

So how should the C4 know that it has to turn on the WeMo 1st before firing up the Sonos?

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This is going to cause some delay as the Sonos boots up, I'm sure your aware of that.

You could also put the wemo/sonos combo on a schedule and power it down during times you wouldn't be awake.

4 watts 24/7 works out to about $5 a year.

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Here in Germany it is a bit more, just under 10€.

 

 

The power-schedule is one solution. Another would be a motion sensor. However the Axxess Motion sensor is above 100$ - so thats not paying out at all :-).

 

When I trigger the WeMo on "audio selection changes or room power on" then there is the delay of the Sonos booting up. But the worse part of the problem is that once it is up and running it is not playing anything because C4 thinks it was already running when the command "Sonos play" was send.

 

So ideal would be to connect Sonos to my WeMo in Composer so that C4 knows it does depend on WeMo to be "on" plus 45s so that the "Play Sonos" command gets delayed from the beginning.

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I would also be afraid the Sonos might not always reconnect to the Sonos mesh every time.  It normally does but I have a friend that has a Play5 that he only uses on his patio and it's unplugged the rest of the time.  Sometimes when you plug it back up you have to do the button press to get it to rejoin the Sonos network.  I'm not sure if anyone else has ever seen this but it's something to look out for.  

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I would advise against this setup.  Since its only 4w I would think it's not worth the MAJOR inconvenience.  If this were to be a way to power off an external amp I could see it.

 

The other concern I have is how the Sonos will hold up to being turned off and back on constantly.  I know some components hate being constantly powered cycled which is why they have standby modes.

 

Just my 2cents.  

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Yeah it is most likely not going to work to an acceptable status a C4 user is accustomed to. However I am not worried about turning it off/on many times, I haven't come across a device in years which got fried by that.

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Hi

Since the Sonos Play's are always on and draw quite some power (4w 24/7) I am asking myself if they could be used in conjunction with WeMo's.

Of course plugging the Sonos in a WeMo and turning it on via a Custom Button is possible it is not the solution I am looking for.

What I am looking for is way to turn on the WeMo when the room turns on or the Sonos is selected for playing media automatically - ideally so that C4 turns on the WeMo first, then waits X seconds for the device to boot up and then initiating the commands to play the media.

Can that be done?

4w. Have you connected to a kill-A-watt Or similar to validate that?
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I am sure you have other devices burning much more power

 

that are going to be much less problematic trying to only power it up on the fly.  For an extreme example, forget about using any announcement driver that utilizes Sonos.

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do this is going to be very complex and slow. As Control4 will attempt to send media to the sonos before is ready to play. meaning you will have to select the media twice or setup a lot of programming to resend the media. The driver does not allow for a delay. I would suggest also looking for power hungry devices around the home. Tvs, amplifiers, or even your whole av center if not used frequently.

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I don't have any subscriptions ;-) and the most power hungry device which is "always on" is my fridge.

 

The intention was more like "can it be done" in a "green" aspect since I just have 2 WeMos unused at the moment, saving money would have been a side nice affect.

But it seems to be a no-go..

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It's a no go in the way you originally wanted to do this. You could still just put the wemo/sonos on a schedule turning the.m off at night and back on during the day. Would still be green and would put the wemo to use, honestly this is how I use my wemo's the most

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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^ Yup, using it to power off at night/during week/work days etc is certainly possible and fine. The reality also though is that you need to remember that at that point your WeMo is using 1w 24/7 while your Sonos starts using 4w less PART of the time. This is true even if your original setup of course, it wouldn't be a straight 1w for 4 w swap, it be 4w to part 1w part 5w swap.

 

There's probably better places to use that WeMo is all.

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It's a no go in the way you originally wanted to do this. You could still just put the wemo/sonos on a schedule turning the.m off at night and back on during the day. Would still be green and would put the wemo to use, honestly this is how I use my wemo's the most

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

 

^ Yup, using it to power off at night/during week/work days etc is certainly possible and fine. The reality also though is that you need to remember that at that point your WeMo is using 1w 24/7 while your Sonos starts using 4w less PART of the time. This is true even if your original setup of course, it wouldn't be a straight 1w for 4 w swap, it be 4w to part 1w part 5w swap.

 

There's probably better places to use that WeMo is all.

 

 

Yup I know. I know I just thought about "pushing the envelope" to see if more is possible.

4w is what the Sonos uses in "deep sleep" so it wont get lower, while playing media is more of course - so when putting it on a nightly schedule it will be shutdown for 8h - this of course will not save much power or money.

 

Interesting would be how the integration of the new Heatmiser Neo is which is supposed to have a detection whether the occupants are at home - maybe that can be used in C4 programming, that would open up new possibilities.

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