Notify a Slack room when Sonos music is playing too loud | Hacker News Reader

Notify a Slack room when Sonos music is playing too loud

github.com

36 pointsdonnik56 comments

Other than turning down the speaker, what possible reason could I have to know that it's "too loud"? This reminds me of smart refrigerators that can notify me when the door is ajar. I'd rather have it constructed so that it just closes automatically. This is the general philosophy anyway. I know that something could be physically obstructing the door. But in that case, I'm more likely to notice a physical alarm than I am to see the notification on some tech device.

In that spirit, it seems better to have a speaker that can't be set higher than the "approved" maximum. If this thing is measuring actual sound level rather than set volume, a slow release limiter, either in software or hardware would just make it automatically correct without the whole notification cycle thing.

The README says that the tool "adjusts [the speaker's] volume if it exceeds a specified maximum" and that the notification is actually just to let you know that this has been done.

Why would I want to know that?

To answer the question, "Wait, why did my computer just do that!?", that pops up every time it does something unexpected.

A Sonos speaker isn’t my computer though. This program only does one thing. Turn down Sonos speakers. Why would I want to know that worked?

Notifications should be actionable.

“The Sonos speaker is too loud” is a sort-of helpful message. I can infer the action.

Better is “the Sonos speaker is too loud, you should turn it down”.

Even better is “the Sonos speaker is too loud, click here to go to the volume settings”.

And better yet is “the Sonos speaker is too loud, should I turn it down?”

But best is the program just doing it and shutting up about it.

And best of all is just setting the volume limit on the speaker: https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/setting-a-volume-lim....

Agree that setting a volume limit on the speaker is the best solution. It gives the person operating the speaker immediate feedback: "It doesn't get any louder than this."

A program that turns the volume down once a speaker gets too loud is, functionally, the same thing? Assuming the feedback is instant, i.e. it instantly decreases the volume.

If there's a delay, however, I can see how a notification might be helpful, if only to alert people, "Hey, this isn't just magically getting quieter. There's a program we've set up that does it."

With API latency there’s a zero percent chance this program responds instantly. According to the README it polls the volume setting every CHECK_INTERVAL seconds. It’s not like this program hooks the volume input event and blocks anything over the max, which is what the actual Sonos setting does.

What would be cool is an ambient noise sensor that can turn down the music if a room gets too loud, say from people talking over the music.

You want to know, because someone in management has decided its a problem, and are intentionally taking choice away from you. It isn't meant to be actionable, but a slap on the wrist.

I have never experienced this. Notification fatigue is always engineering’s fault.

I have faced my share of micromanagers but nobody has ever told me how to set my notifications.

You may not. Doesn't mean the same preference applies to everyone else in the world.

How many notifications is too many? Do you want kernel interrupt notifications? At what point do you just let the computer help you?

Read my above comment again. 0 can be too many or a million can be too less. What's the problem with choice?

>This reminds me of smart refrigerators that can notify me when the door is ajar. I'd rather have it constructed so that it just closes automatically.

a world of liability is escaped by avoiding that feature add. This is similar to why self-closing doors/trunks/hatches took so long to catch on. It wasn't a technology problem, Cadillac and Rolls Royce showed this stuff in the 60s -- it was a liability gamble.

> a world of liability is escaped by avoiding that feature add

Huh? There are no refrigerators that don't have that feature.

“That feature add” referred to auto-closure, I’d imagine.

Every refrigerator I have used does this with gravity.

Perhaps a regional specificity? Personally I've never seen such an auto-closing fridge in France.

It’s nothing special. The fridge is just leveled so the hinge is slightly higher on both sides. The door then naturally swings closed. Do French refrigerators have some kind of mechanism that would prevent this? Like a latch of some kind?

We just have them perfectly level, so the door does not move at all on its own.

Weird. Why?

I don't know. When I google this question in French, I see people whose fridge door does close on its own, asking for how to solve this issue; so they must find it inconvenient.

You are not insane, I have also never seen any fridge that auto closes (I'm from central Europe).

> “That feature add” referred to auto-closure, I’d imagine.

Yes, of course; what do you think the alternative was? There are no refrigerators that don't have that feature.

Based on my experience, that statement is not only wrong, but obviously so. Because of that, I assumed it was not what you meant.

You should try using a fridge sometime.

Kind of. My home refrigerator does this and it just works. The one at work regular gets hung up nearly shut. There's a local minimum in the almost closed state. It only has enough momentum to close if builds up enough speed.

The ideal refrigerator should self close from any angle of open-ness. This is definitely not the case in general today.

"auto close" doesn't have to mean "unstoppably closed by hydralic press". Every fridge closes itself by simple and gentle gravity.

Not my fridge :( I'm renting an apartment and they installed some awful fridge where the doors don't close on their own. In fact, there's actually some resistance so that you have to push it with some effort to close it.

I've been living here for months and I still forget to close it half the time. But, at least it has a "helpful" feature that beeps at me (very quietly) if it's left open.

have you tried cleaning the hinge and applying some oil formulated for metal?

Yeah my new fridge also has this for some reason. There is a sort of detent at the quarter open positon and it won't go past that on its own. You have to push it past that point to close it. And it will beep if you leave it open for a few minutes. Absolutely baffling design.

This is exactly the case for me. People suggested oiling the hinge or something but from examining the mechanism, it just appears to be designed this way. No idea why.

I bet it's still designed to and trying to, and simply failing to for any number of reasons.

It's fine if it tries but only weakly, and fails sometimes because of that.

One fridge failing every time is still just "sometimes" for the design.

Failing to chop off a babies head is an intentional part of the design, and it's still auto-close even when it fails to close because of an obstruction or improper installation or manufacturing defect or even because of a bad design that would never work well but was intended to.

There's no way any fridge is actually designed to stop before closing. That will be some assembly or desgn flaw like the seal rubs or something.

I had to hack my mother in laws fridge to prevent the door seals from interfering and preventing the doors from closing all the way. It worked fine when it was new, but after a short while the shitty design of the door to door seals, the seals hit and rub on each other and and after a while the seals started to pull out to where they then interfered. The door was still designed to close itself, and tried to, just another part of the design sabotaged that intention.

It's such a weak force normally that it's easy interfere with. A hinge installed slightly off will look fine and work fine, but the seal on the hinge side maybe rubs just a bit, and that's enough to spoil it. Or a nick in a teflon washer acting as a bearing, producing a detent resting spot. Could be anything but there is no way it's in the drawings and designed to do that.

Slack is eating the world because we made email useless for communication by creating thousands of robots that send us pointless notification emails.

Now SlackOps encourages us to make the same mistake.

I never want an IM saying something worked. That’s just noise.

I'm assuming OP already uses Slack for other things. Otherwise something like push notifications via Pushover would be low code, high visibility solution.

Sure but I definitely don’t want a push notification that something worked.

Why?? Sonos has a maximum volume limit. If you’re going to auto turn down, why notify. If you can limit, why do either.

The max volume doesn't help with songs that are far, far louder than others. I have this issue in our coffee shop, where a song that was playing at a normal volume on my AirPods, is extremely loud on Sonos. We flag it and take it off the playlist.

Side note: Sonos is atrocious when it comes to functionality and reliability, and it has only gotten worse recently. I can't discourage people enough from purchasing their product.

Have you calibrated the speakers with their TruePlay thing on recently? If that has gone wrong it may be the cause.

It seems very strange that the relative volumes would be so different on AirPods and via Sonos otherwise.

Your side note is totally true. Since the “new” app it has gone to hell. Has now joined the queue of things in need of replacements in this house.

Try installing it in commercial spaces with say a dozen+ devices. It's a nightmare. It's so God damn crap at syncing audio and introduced lag and glitches to audio despite all network conditions being rock solid. Pita to work with. Pretty bonkers given the price of the devices.

I worked on the TruePlay product. It won't help in this case. Even though most streaming services do loudness normalization to keep tracks at around the same volume as each other, some are still louder than others.

Sorry I meant if a bad calibration had sent the EQ off so a track sounds unusually loud relative to others via Airpods. I have certainly had to recalibrate mine when it woke up with no bass at all and everything was super quiet.

It only makes sense as a problem if there is something about the unique combination of Sonos and music or it would have the same relative difference when played on Airpods.

Do you have a product you recommend? Ideally one with built-in AirPlay Support?

are sonos still zero auth when on network and discoverable? god we had so much fun biking around manhattan looking for open wifi, discovering speakers, and play fart sounds. i think the repo is still up: Sonoying.

Yep. They used to require a physical button press to connect, but that was a pain when speakers were mounted up high. The simple solution is to not run Sonos on an unsecured network.

Why did you create this? Kids playing their music too loud for your liking? Couldn't you just... talk to them about it?

Here is the recipe: you talk to them first about it, then they do nothing about it for weeks. And you repeat and it goes on. Then you create the script.

In this situation, a parenting book will be more effective than a python script.

Nothing says, “I’m out of touch with the world today” more than statements like “just try talking to them”

Talking to people doesn’t get one anywhere in today’s individualistic society.

If they’re annoying neighbors, they’ll become even more annoying. If they’re your kids they’ll just ignore you more. If they’re annoying neighbor kids they’ll get away with murder while you can’t do anything and their terrible parents encourage them.

Awful people are awful. Reasonable people aren’t likely doing things that need correction to begin with, or will quickly realize they’re doing it and self-correct.

>Talking to people doesn’t get one anywhere in today’s individualistic society.

>If they’re annoying neighbors, they’ll become even more annoying. If they’re your kids they’ll just ignore you more. If they’re annoying neighbor kids they’ll get away with murder while you can’t do anything and their terrible parents encourage them.

If this has been your experience, that's a shame.

Talking to people has been the most effective tool in my dispute-resolution toolbox for decades. It still is.

sounds more like you're just bad at talking... when I talk to somebody with respect, it's very rare they will they not listen to me, or that they wont make a good faith effort to try to help.

This is the complete opposite of my lived experience. I've yet to talk to a neighbor and have it result in a more annoying experience, and my kids are great at talking things through with us without ignoring us. Not every experience is perfect, but then nothing in life is perfect all the time, so that's par for the course.

Awful people are indeed awful, but most people aren't awful. In fact, they're reasonable.

I prefer automated restrictions. I learned a lot about computers while circumventing automated restrictions.

Just don't make 'em too effective. They gotta win sometimes or they'll stop trying.

I'm finding it really hard to imagine a circumstance where I'm sharing:

a) space

b) Sonos speakers

and c) a slack channel

All with the same person. And if I did, I'd probably just turn the speakers down and tell them it's too loud, then set the volume limit in Sonos.

I came just to learn what it means to 'Slack' a room. I was disappointed.

Thankfully the thread title has now been changed to be more meaningful

Wow this is so cool - HackerNews post of the day IMO!!!

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