Home developers using Sonos Labs?

[crispibits]

Is there any way for home/open source developers to use the Sonos Labs API? It would be a great way to stimulate interest in the Sonos in a whole new arena?

[Ron - Sonos]

Absolutely! Any developer can register on the musicservices.sonos.com site and use the API. Have you registered there yet?

[ianmacd]

Originally Posted by Ron - Sonos

Absolutely! Any developer can register on the musicservices.sonos.com site and use the API. Have you registered there yet?

I registered there a while back, but received no response. I was expecting a link to the docs, etc.

[ianmacd]

Originally Posted by ianmacd

I registered there a while back, but received no response. I was expecting a link to the docs, etc.

It turns out that my SMTP server rejects the messages that the registration system sends. That's because the return address given at SMTP time isn't one that can receive a reply:

apache@domU-12-31-39-00-7C-58.compute-1.internal

As you can see, it doesn't even feature a valid domain. This flags it as spam on my system and the message is rejected.

I temporarily reconfigured the system in order to receive the one e-mail I needed, but you should be aware that others may get caught in similar traps.

[BarryM]

Originally Posted by Ron - Sonos

Absolutely! Any developer can register on the musicservices.sonos.com site and use the API. Have you registered there yet?

Thanks Ron. I am pleasantly surprised. .... Why surprised?

The site doesn't seem to invite open source nor hobby community programmers to apply.

It is all about Music Service vendors wanting to obtain a global market. There is a FAQ link on the Welcome page, but you cannot gain access to it without an account (?)

If one applies for an account you have mandatory questions which only relate to vendor of such a service ("what codec and bit rate does your service use, etc). Nowhere does it indicate that community programmers can apply, ie. people who may only be offering a local music service coming from the customer's own music tracks.

Do you think that it is worth clarifying this on your Welcome Page?

Also the url is (http://musicpartners.sonos.com/ by the way, not site name in your post).

[ianmacd]

Originally Posted by BarryM

Why surprised?

The site doesn't seem to invite open source nor hobby community programmers to apply.

An excellent point, Barry. It's not obvious that the API is a general interest API for anyone looking to bolt extra functionality onto the Sonos. And yet, the API is as well-suited to local streaming servers as it is to remote ones.

The area where the API falls down, IMHO, is codec support. If you're content with WMA and MP3, you're OK, but FLAC, high quality AAC and Ogg Vorbis are all missing.

This means that it's currently not possible to write code that enables local lossless streaming from a server.

I don't know whether this is a technical limitation, or whether it's simply the case that Sonos didn't enable it, because no remote streaming service has the bandwidth to stream lossless data. The fact that the Sonos can natively play FLAC files gives me hope.

Anyway, please consider enabling more codecs, Sonos; particularly FLAC.

[Ron - Sonos]

Thanks for the excellent feedback!

Ian - Someone should be contacting you today to help resolve your email issue if it's still a problem. We are aware that some of these emails are getting caught by spam filters and are working with our provider to help resolve the issue.

Barry - Good points about the language used in these questions. I'm sure we can make some changes to ensure that we are as friendly to open-source types as we intend to be.

Ian - Re. support for those other codecs via our API, point taken. We'll add these to our list of possible future enhancements.

[crispibits]

Thanks, I'll have to make sure I'm allowed to use the API (I work for a software company, but also play with software in my own time), and then will have a crack at it. Glad to see my query raised a few other voices as well :-)

[Ron - Sonos]

Originally Posted by ianmacd

The area where the API falls down, IMHO, is codec support. If you're content with WMA and MP3, you're OK, but FLAC, high quality AAC and Ogg Vorbis are all missing.

I forgot to mention that we now support AAC+ aka HE-AAC. This was added with the firmware update back in the fall.

[Sebastien]

Thanks for opening the API !

I was looking for a better podcasts support
I've created an application on Red Hat Openshift express thanks to the Java API exemple and ... tadaaaa ... it works great !

My Rss podcasts are now parsed on demand and always updated

I'll do a post on it if you want.