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Sonos Alarms Are Waking Users a Day Early (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the technical-glitch dept.

Waking up to your favorite music is always nice, but it becomes rather annoying when you can'' turn off said alarm. From a report on Engadget: That's exactly what Sonos users are experiencing and one editor on our staff dealt with the headache first hand. In fact, the alarms are also going off a day early, meaning Saturday wake-up calls were playing this morning. The company posted in its forums this morning that it's looking into the issue and recommends users delete all alarms from the Sonos app for right now. As our editor and many others have experienced, deleting the alarms is the only way to make them stop. We'll have to wait for official word on the cause, but alarms set for December 31st going off on December 30th could be a New Year's or Leap Year bug. Back in 2011, Apple had a problem with iPhone alarms not working correctly on January 1st.

38 comments

  1. Curly Quotes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Waking up to your favorite music is always nice, but it becomes rather annoying when you can'' turn off said alarm.

    Just because the internet killed the curly quote, doesn't mean you need to overcompensate...

    1. Re: Curly Quotes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmm... What are _you_ doing here?

  2. Unlike editing by burtosis · · Score: 1

    but it becomes rather annoying when you can'' turn off said alarm.

    Because sloppy editing is never annoying.

  3. Some alarmateuring is going on here... by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Obviously.

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  4. how is an alarm set for dec 31 going off on the 30 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    a new years bug?? do tehy now know how many days december has?

    also whats a sonos, some millenial thing?

  5. Programming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bad programming. How many of us have had to solve calendar issues in programming as a 1st or 2nd year CS assignment. Cmon people its not that hard.

    1. Re:Programming by Troed · · Score: 2, Informative

      Most 1st or 2nd year calendar CS assignments would fail in the real world though. It is that hard.

      http://infiniteundo.com/post/2...
      http://infiniteundo.com/post/2...

      --
      it's in my head
    2. Re:Programming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've worked on a couple of large system (both handling several million sales transactions per day), and in both cases, they had to shut down the systems for spring and fall time changes. In another system, I found (and fixed) a bug that had existed for at least a decade, where a payment card transaction that was sent out on one day, but the response was received the next day (i.e. went out at 23:59:59, received response at 00:00:01) would cause every subsequent response to be assigned to the wrong request (causing the system to think a good transaction was bad and visa-versa).

      Getting time/data programming rock-solid is surprisingly difficult.

  6. Re:how is an alarm set for dec 31 going off on the by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    a new years bug?? do tehy now know how many days december has?

    also whats a sonos, some millenial thing?

    http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=sonos&l=1

  7. Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I like how that little jab at Apple was tossed in just at the end of the summary without any context whatsoever.

    In Apple's case, the issue was that one-off alarms wouldn't trigger since January 1 (recurring alarms would still trigger), and unlike the bozos at Sonos, in Apple's case, the bug was fixed by January 3.

    As an aside, I should also point out that, though annoying, Apple's bug was only present January 1 and 2 - A saturday and a sunday, respectively - where you have no business waking up early anyway.

    1. Re:Apple by sims+2 · · Score: 1

      I have to work on saturdays you insensitive clod!

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      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    2. Re:Apple by hawguy · · Score: 1

      I like how that little jab at Apple was tossed in just at the end of the summary without any context whatsoever

      Isn't this context?

      Back in 2011, Apple had a problem with iPhone alarms not working correctly on January 1st.

    3. Re:Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not working correctly could mean a million things.

      Since we are discussing an issue where alarms are being fired early, one could be led to assume the problem was the same. Or it could be worse.

      Just saying "Oh, and Apple had problems too way back in 2011" is not very useful.

  8. Sonos... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ...Sorry, not a clue. Off to Soylent News I go!

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    1. Re:Sonos... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sonos. No idea. From the name, presumably something having to do with sound.

      Google says... wireless speakers and sound systems. Why would speakers and sound systems have alarms? Maybe people have apps on their mobile devices that are configured to output to the wireless sound systems and its those apps that are boned? Don't know, don't particularly care. As has been suggested, it's probably just a noob programmer who hasn't figured out that working with dates/times isn't always a simple matter of cut-and-paste of sample code.

    2. Re:Sonos... by thegarbz · · Score: 0, Troll

      If you, a reader of a tech site, doesn't know who Sonos are then frankly I'll hold the door for you on the way out and wish you on your merry way.

      Bye-bye.

    3. Re:Sonos... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You condescending fuck. What gives you the right to communicate in such a typically cliched SJW manner? It's people like YOU that make me want to leave /.

      -Fuck You.

      Ps- in the nicest possible way mind you.

    4. Re:Sonos... by Khyber · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know who Sonos is, primarily because now that I see what they build and due to the fact I'm a huge fucking electronics geek, I see I've already got a solution I built myself and don't need their crap, thus I've never had a need to look up a company providing such a product.

      --
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    5. Re:Sonos... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Well Soylent could use more than the readership of 30 people it has right now.

    6. Re:Sonos... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yours is the typical comment of a 7 digit ID holder.

    7. Re:Sonos... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol, overpriced wireless speakers it appears. I have an awesome vintage stereo and my clock/radio/alarm has been working fine for decades. No need for me to know who they are either it seems.

      What does one do with a $569 speakers anyway? My vintage ones were less than that and they will shake the windows out of the house, rather doubtful for those little wireless things:)

    8. Re:Sonos... by Khyber · · Score: 1

      SoylentNews proved it was shit by chasing away its more ardent beginning supporters. I was one of them.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  9. It's like... by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

    It's like a Portlandia sketch come to life

    --
    My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
  10. What language did they use? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What language did they use for the software in this case?

    Ruby? JavaScript?

    Would the problem still have occurred if they had been using, say, a language like Rust or Go?

  11. Testing failure by redcliffe · · Score: 1

    Basically it says they aren't doing proper boundary testing. Stuff like that should be easy to automate.

  12. Oh, the humanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More victims of the most cursed year ever, 2016.

    Goddamn you, 2016!!! (shakes fist)

  13. Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Those lazy Sonos users won't oversleep then.

  14. Another home-spun date-time implemenation by guruevi · · Score: 2

    There are plenty of libraries available that have worked pretty much all the date-time functions out. They are open source too, so you can freely use them in your projects.

    I don't know how people still fail at this.

    --
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    1. Re:Another home-spun date-time implemenation by Rhys · · Score: 1

      I had the same initial reaction, but I thought about it a bit more.

      Sonos may have had to write their own library. They need measured-in-milliseconds audio synchronization between speakers for their product to work (and it does, we have a set and love them). Remember that they first released this back in what, 2005? Yes, these days they can get a lot of CPU power in a PLAY:N speaker for cheap because of the smartphone revolution. 2005? Not so much. They may have had to write their own library (though why it would only surface this year does seem pretty questionable) because of hardware constraints.

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    2. Re:Another home-spun date-time implemenation by guruevi · · Score: 1

      Synchronization does not rely on accurate date/time representations. You may use a synchronized clock signal and for audio you also need to know location/distance so you can insert appropriate delays but you're not converting time stamps back and forth, even if you had an accurate NTP source, you're going to be skewing way too fast for NTP to accurately correct.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    3. Re:Another home-spun date-time implemenation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As a ex-Sonos employee, This does not surprise me in the least. I left the company because their software is at 10 years out of date. They do not use open source and believe in writing everything from scratch, and then pat themselves on the back after their greenfield implementation passes manual testing. This is mandated by upper management sadly. It is frankly unbelievable how well their stuff works given the state of the software, though I must admit the hardware components are top notch. As far as IoT vulnerabilities go, I would never, never allow a microphone-equipped Sonos speaker in my house.

  15. that's insane so insane it didn't make sense. by thewolfkin · · Score: 1

    I was to stuck on this messed up heading

    Waking up to your favorite music is always nice, but it becomes rather annoying when you can'' turn off said alarm.

    It made no sense because it never even occurred to me that they were trying to say can't. I mean what kind of alarm can't you turn off? Day early or not you should always be able to turn off the alarm? Any how even once an alarm was constant to the point where I couldn't turn it off is the day I stop using that device forever.

    In fact, the alarms are also going off a day early, meaning Saturday wake-up calls were playing this morning.

    Like what does alarms going off a day early have to do with it? The problem isn't alarms going off early. The problem is alarms are going off and you can't stop them. THAT should have been the headline.

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    1. Re:that's insane so insane it didn't make sense. by Rhys · · Score: 1

      Proof that slashdot isn't "real" journalism: a newspaper would have had a headline more like 'Alarming bug wakes sonos users early' or maybe 'Sonos says "no quick fix" for alarming bug' ... ?

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  16. huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i can think of several other ways to make the alarms stop.

  17. SEO namedropping. by SeaFox · · Score: 1

    Back in 2011, Apple had a problem with iPhone alarms not working correctly on January 1st.

    Really? Apple had an issue with iPhone hardware causing alarms to go off early? Or do you mean there was an iOS issue, but you really wanted a reason to say "iPhone" in your story somewhere?

  18. My wife has 3 alarm apps by HalAtWork · · Score: 1

    My wife has 3 alarm apps on her LG phone to make sure she wakes up because invariably they will not work all of the time. Ridiculous.

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    1. Re:My wife has 3 alarm apps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My wife has an LG phone and she just uses the google alarm app and it works flawlessly.

      I have a different brand of android device, and it works for me too.