Have a look at mDNS. It’s very often the issue here.

If you use home assistant take a look at music assistant, it solves a lot of these issues for free.

Sadly you still need that POS to intially configure it and the occasional update.

That very much sounds like a network problem.

Are both hosts in the same subnet?

Well, we did learn exactly that in school and had a practical demonstration at a museum.

But on a different continent.

Just as a way to soothe the outrage about this POS of an app: A fair share of the problem can be minimised by using Home Assistant and Music Assistant to control the Sonos devices. This way you very rarely need to actually use the app anymore.

Which is good because it’s indeed shit.

I can see if someone is on the toilet and having a Nr.2 by checking the power draw of the Japanese style toilet. (I also have a presence detector). I do not monitor the first part intentionally, though.

I unintentionally catched some birds eating on camera and that led to us installing a designated bird cam - in a 3D printed bird house. The AI model for identification is still in the works though - there aren’t any good European based ones available as open source so I still will need to work out my own.

I found out the kid is reading FAR more than thought and is using the PC far less than I thought. Sorry kiddo!

CO2 is going up far more than expected,yes. What I found more interesting, though, is the direct connection between the humidity and my sinus infections - I always get them if my room air gets to dry.

Cooking releases an ungodly amount of VOC and uses FAR more electric energy than I thought.

And: After two years of optimisation I can control the temperature in two very sun exposed rooms just by using the covers and a weather forecast extremely well. Means they are up to 4° colder in the summer than before and 10° warmer in winter. Sadly this does not apply to all rooms.

And last but not least: Heating is the only point where home automation really saves energy here.

The good news is: This is really really really unlikely and generally only possible for some rare types of cancer.

Unless you are an Tasmanian Tiger devil.

You don’t give your friend a thing, you give his poor wife something. A bidet goes so long and pregnancy itself is hard.

Seriously: Offer her to do some chores like shopping, gift them some take-away gift cards,etc. The situation will put a serious strain on their relationship,