Hey everyone, I wanted to share my recent success with setting up a Sonos group automation. It was a bit of a challenge, but I learned a lot along the way!
I’ve been trying to automate my basement speakers to join with the office speaker when someone enters the room. The idea is to have music follow me seamlessly throughout the house. Sounds simple, right? Well, it turned out to be a bit more complex than I expected.
I started by creating a helper group called media_player.basement_all in my configuration. The goal was for the office speaker to join this group when triggered by a presence sensor. But every time I tested it, I ran into an error saying the entity ID was invalid. I was a bit stuck and even considered reaching out for help, but I decided to dive deeper into the problem.
After some research and trial and error, I realized the issue was with how I was referencing the group in my automation. I was using group.media_player.basement_all instead of just media_player.basement_all. Once I corrected that, everything started working smoothly!
The automation now triggers when someone enters the office, checks if any basement speakers are already playing, and if not, joins the office speaker to the basement group. It’s such a neat setup and makes my home feel even more connected.
I wanted to share this because it shows how a little persistence and problem-solving can lead to great results. If anyone else is struggling with similar automations, don’t hesitate to ask for advice or share your own tips!
Happy automating! 
