SoCo

SoCo (Sonos Controller) is a simple Python class that allows you to programmatically control Sonos speakers. It was originally created at Music Hack Day Sydney by Rahim Sonawalla and is now developed by a team of people at its GitHub repository

For more background on the project, please see Rahim's blog post.

Visit the SoCo documentation for a more detailed overview of all the functionailty.

Installation

SoCo requires Python 2.7, or 3.3 or newer.

Use pip:

pip install soco

SoCo depends on the Requests HTTP library. If you use pip to install Soco, Requests will be installed automatically for you. If not, you can use:

pip install requests

Basic Usage

You can interact with a Sonos Zone Player through a SoCo object. If you know the IP address of a Zone Player, you can create a SoCo object directly:

>>> from soco import SoCo
>>> my_zone = SoCo('192.168.1.101')
>>> my_zone.player_name
Kitchen
>>> my_zone.status_light = True
>>> my_zone.volume = 6

But perhaps the easiest way is to use the module-level discover function. This will find all the Zone Players on your network, and return a python set containing them:

>>> import soco
>>> for zone in soco.discover():
...        print zone.player_name
Living Room
Kitchen

If you prefer a list to a set:

>>> zone_list = list(soco.discover())
>>> zone_list
[SoCo("192.168.1.101"), SoCo("192.168.1.102")]
>>> zone_list[0].mute()

Of course, you can also play music!

#!/usr/bin/env python
from soco import SoCo

if __name__ == '__main__':
    sonos = SoCo('192.168.1.102') # Pass in the IP of your Sonos speaker
    # You could use the discover function instead, if you don't know the IP

    # Pass in a URI to a media file to have it streamed through the Sonos
    # speaker
    sonos.play_uri(
        'http://archive.org/download/TenD2005-07-16.flac16/TenD2005-07-16t10Wonderboy_64kb.mp3')

    track = sonos.get_current_track_info()

    print track['title']

    sonos.pause()

    # Play a stopped or paused track
    sonos.play()

Example Applications

To show off what can be made with SoCo, a simple web application is included in the examples folder.

Screenshot of web app

Features

SoCo supports the following controls amongst others:

• Play
• Pause
• Stop
• Next track
• Previous track
• Get current transport information(if speaker is playing,paused,stopped)
• Get information about the currently playing track
  • Track title
  • Artist
  • Album
  • Album Art (if available)
  • Track length
  • Duration played (for example, 30 seconds into a 3 minute song)
  • Playlist position (for example, item 5 in the playlist)
  • Track URI
• Mute (or unmute) the speaker
• Get or set the speaker volume
• Get or set the speaker’s bass EQ
• Get or set the speaker’s treble EQ
• Toggle the speaker’s loudness compensation
• Turn on (or off) the white status light on the unit
• Switch the speaker’s source to line-in or TV input (if the Zone Player supports it)
• Get the speaker’s information
  • Zone Name
  • Zone Icon
  • UID (usually something like RINCON_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX)
  • Serial Number
  • Software version
  • Hardware version
  • MAC Address
• Set the speaker’s Zone Name
• Find all the Sonos speakers in a network.
• Put all Sonos speakers in a network into “party mode”.
• “Unjoin” speakers from a group.
• Manage the Sonos queue (get the items in it, add to it, clear it, play a specific song from it)
• Get the saved favorite radio stations and shows (title and stream URI)
• Search for and play item from your music library
• Start a music library update and determine if one is in progress

SoCo also supports lower level access from Python to all Sonos services (eg Alarms)

Related Projects

Socos is a command line tool for controlling Sonos devices. It is developed in conjunction with Soco, but in a separate repository.

More of a Ruby fan? Not a problem, Sam Soffes is building out an awesome Ruby gem.

Looking for a GUI that’s more than just a sample project? Joel Björkman is building a Sonos Controller GUI–great for folks on Linux where there isn’t an official Sonos Controller application! Find, fork, and contribute to it here: https://github.com/labero/SoCo-Tk.

Google Group

There is a Soco group over at Google Groups. Feel free to drop in.

License

SoCo is released under the MIT license.