I purchased a play 5 for part. Turns out it’s recycled but the speakers work just fine. I understand the need to brick the software component of the speaker but is there any reason this can’t be used as a plain old “dumb speaker?” Seems like a total waste to make the speaker completely non functional.
Answered
Repurpose recycled Play 5
Best answer by Stanley_4
No direct instructions but you could start with something like a Raspberry Pi Zero-W (cheap and has a WiFi radio) computer and add a power-amp to it. Making that a bit more complicated the internal speakers in a Play 5 aren’t a simple left right pair.
LF Driver: 3 x 4” woofers and HF Driver: 1 x 1” and 2 x ¾” tweeters
From a quick look at Amazon, to drive just a stereo pair of the internal LF and HF speakers this setup would work.
A complete kit, just the Pi is a lot cheaper if you have the other stuff:
https://smile.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Wireless-Complete-Starter/dp/B07CMVDHWB/ref=sr_1_5
Small 3 Watt amp:
Or a hefty 60 Watt amp:
Crossover:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01N6Q75DW/ref=psdc_11042521_t1_B01IZ7JF2I
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You could use it as a dumb speaker if you can find a way to feed it audio. Since the software is locked doing that using the Sonos circuit boards is a complex issue.
Now gutting the Sonos boards and adding a power supply, amplifier and crossover to the case is easily doable.
Stanley_4 wrote:
You could use it as a dumb speaker if you can find a way to feed it audio. Since the software is locked doing that using the Sonos circuit boards is a complex issue.
Now gutting the Sonos boards and adding a power supply, amplifier and crossover to the case is easily doable.
It does not sound easy to me :)
If you know of any tutorials or directions, I am all ears. Shame to let this perfectly good speaker go to waste!
No direct instructions but you could start with something like a Raspberry Pi Zero-W (cheap and has a WiFi radio) computer and add a power-amp to it. Making that a bit more complicated the internal speakers in a Play 5 aren’t a simple left right pair.
LF Driver: 3 x 4” woofers and HF Driver: 1 x 1” and 2 x ¾” tweeters
From a quick look at Amazon, to drive just a stereo pair of the internal LF and HF speakers this setup would work.
A complete kit, just the Pi is a lot cheaper if you have the other stuff:
https://smile.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Wireless-Complete-Starter/dp/B07CMVDHWB/ref=sr_1_5
Small 3 Watt amp:
Or a hefty 60 Watt amp:
Crossover:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01N6Q75DW/ref=psdc_11042521_t1_B01IZ7JF2I
Stanley_4 wrote:
No direct instructions but you could start with something like a Raspberry Pi Zero-W (cheap and has a WiFi radio) computer and add a power-amp to it. Making that a bit more complicated the internal speakers in a Play 5 aren’t a simple left right pair.
LF Driver: 3 x 4” woofers and HF Driver: 1 x 1” and 2 x ¾” tweeters
From a quick look at Amazon, to drive just a stereo pair of the internal LF and HF speakers this setup would work.
A complete kit, just the Pi is a lot cheaper if you have the other stuff:
https://smile.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Wireless-Complete-Starter/dp/B07CMVDHWB/ref=sr_1_5
Small 3 Watt amp:
Or a hefty 60 Watt amp:
Crossover:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01N6Q75DW/ref=psdc_11042521_t1_B01IZ7JF2I
I’d bet a beer and a shot that you are significantly smarter than I am.
I wouldn’t go there but I did start off my career burning knuckles on vacuum tubes and ducking the clouds of selenium oxide fumes from failed rectifiers. :-)
Seriously the Pi is designed for kids, the grandkids love theirs, it is not rocket science.
Pardon my ignorance, but as the play5 is standalone anyway, doesn’t it already have a built in amplifier?
Kelson wrote:
Pardon my ignorance, but as the play5 is standalone anyway, doesn’t it already have a built in amplifier?
Well no but…
The Play 5 has something like five amplifiers (too lazy to look at the description) but they are Class D and integrated into the other electronics making getting them working with the software locked down a major project if not impossible.
I took one look at my Play 5 Gen 1 innards and dropped my plan to keep any of the electronics inside, even the power supply. Now on the ZP-80 I did keep the power supplies as they are not integrated with the rest of the electronics and just have a plug to connect to them.
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Realistically, if anyone can do this it is Sonos via some kind of firmware change that allows the line in analog signal to reach the drive units after amplification - and the unit would do nothing else, and not sit on any Sonos system, legacy or otherwise. Ditto for the Connect Amp. For the Connect, not so much because all it contains for stand alone operation can be bought for a pittance.
But the interest in this will be too small for the effort to be justified, even if possible. Better instead to retain the legacy products in a legacy system mode of operation.
Perhaps the modification may still make sense when legacy mode become unviable, but hopefully that is far enough in the future that these legacy hardware electronics will be close to dying, in which case it still won’t make sense.
Thanks for that Stanley 4. To re-purpose then we need a new method of amplification and ideally a way to add Bluetooth or WiFi connectivity. I’m not interested in making them work with Sonos, they have lost my trust. If I could get them on a network with Bowers and Wilkins or Raumfeld then that would be nice, but stand alone would do. Or even the sort of changes Invebo does for old Bose iPod docks.
The speakers themselves are fine and it’s completely unacceptable to me that they should be landfill fodder at the behest of Sonos.
The links in my post above will get you a working speaker with WiFi, Bluetooth and Ethernet if you switch to a Pi 3 or 4 instead of the Zero.
Stanley_4 wrote:
The links in my post above will get you a working speaker with WiFi, Bluetooth and Ethernet if you switch to a Pi 3 or 4 instead of the Zero.
Hi Stanley, I think there would be a great amount of interest if you provided a little more understanding on how the Pi can re-purpose the Play 5. I have a Pi3 sitting on my shelf at the moment.
Are you proposing that all the electronics needed to be gutted and replaced with the Pi and the 60W amp effectively bypassing the built-in amps? I think the play 5 has 6 speakers, so how would you possibly wire the Pi amplifier to 6 separate speaker? Thanks!
Yes, a complete gutting of the electronics, and properly recycling them of course.
My plan is to initially do it as a stereo pair and see how it sounds. With 60 watts available there are several possibilities to power the remaining speakers. I think using a stereo to mono mixing transformer might be a good option.
Kumar wrote:
Realistically, if anyone can do this it is Sonos via some kind of firmware change that allows the line in analog signal to reach the drive units after amplification - and the unit would do nothing else, and not sit on any Sonos system, legacy or otherwise.
But the interest in this will be too small for the effort to be justified, even if possible.
I’m not so sure. I have recently recycled my Play 5 to get a discount on something new. Now, before this i would never have considered taking my fully-functioning Play5 out to my dusty old shed, because its a crappy environment for such a good speaker. But now that the Play5 has been recycled and is otherwise heading for landfill anyway, that has changed.
Being able to line in to the Play5 from my phone (no software, no wifi… just dumb old analog amplification) would be useful to me. And it seems like i have this perfectly good unit that would now be perfect for my dusty old shed, and the only thing wrong with it is that the software is unusable.
Am i really the only one in this position?
I’m thinking, surely the signal comes out of the processor/wifi board to be amplified by the pre-amps. Is there really no simple way to tap a line-in jack into that?
Symmetry wrote:
Am i really the only one in this position?
I’m thinking, surely the signal comes out of the processor/wifi board to be amplified by the pre-amps. Is there really no simple way to tap a line-in jack into that?
No you are not. Like said before, each of the amplifying components are microcontrolled by the software engine which is dead. The real problem lies in the volume control, which is part of the software module. The least time consuming and most cost effective solution, would be to open up it up and remove everything you can, save the baffles and speakers. Buy this (has line in jack AND bluetooth). You could drill a hole in the top or the back for the volume control, aux jack. You’ll need to feed in a DC power supply. Here is the nice thing about bluetooth. You could set the volume knob to 50% and then use the the volume control on your phone to go from 0-50% on the box by going 0-100% on your phone. I’d happily build this for you for free labor, but the shipping of the sonos would preclude value.
Hello everyone,
I managed to revive a recycled Sonos play 5 and it's original amplification board, with a cheap Arylic module. Not only can it stream from music services again, but know it also has become a Bluetooth-able speaker.
But my play 5 was in an awaiting recycle mode status (I unplugged it before the 20 days, and it never get connected to Sonos since then), so I need to validate my build with a sonos-ota-recycle-bricked device. Do you know where I can get one for research purposes?
If anyone is interested I can share more details.
z0n0es wrote:
yes !
Disclaimer, please be aware that the opening of this device exposes you to electrical shock risks.
As mentionnend before my play 5 was shut down during the 21 days of its recycle mode. After what I removed the WLAN module.
My first attemp idea was to keep only the power board from the Sonos, and replace the Sonos logic board with an Arylic Pro board I had lying around.
The GPIO-like port exposes most of the CS44800 DAC pins, especialy the I2S protocol pins that I could output from the Arylic bord, but I didn’t managed yet to power up the DAC.
But overall, with the Sonos logic board reinserted, the device still starts, and won’t connect anymore because of the missing WLAN board. The line-in jack passthrough works after the play 5 has booted up, so I only soldered some wires from the jack and placed the Arylic board into the bottom of the play 5. And it still work since 5-6 months now.
MoZoY wrote:
z0n0es wrote:
yes !
Disclaimer, please be aware that the opening of this device exposes you to electrical shock risks.
As mentionnend before my play 5 was shut down during the 21 days of its recycle mode. After what I removed the WLAN module.
My first attemp idea was to keep only the power board from the Sonos, and replace the Sonos logic board with an Arylic Pro board I had lying around.
The GPIO-like port exposes most of the CS44800 DAC pins, especialy the I2S protocol pins that I could output from the Arylic bord, but I didn’t managed yet to power up the DAC.
But overall, with the Sonos logic board reinserted, the device still starts, and won’t connect anymore because of the missing WLAN board. The line-in jack passthrough works after the play 5 has booted up, so I only soldered some wires from the jack and placed the Arylic board into the bottom of the play 5. And it still work since 5-6 months now.
Exactly which board did u use? Can u show a schematic of what u did? Id love to just use this as a Bluetooth speaker
Is it possible to override the recycled status?
Or can a recycled speaker be added to your set up at all??
+23Others have claimed that Deactivated Sonos devices can now be re-added back. I have one, and I was asked if I wanted to add it to my existing Household. I declined the offer (don’t ask why), but Reddit users have claimed this works.
controlav wrote:
Others have claimed that Deactivated Sonos devices can now be re-added back. I have one, and I was asked if I wanted to add it to my existing Household. I declined the offer (don’t ask why), but Reddit users have claimed this works.
i sent an email asking if it could be added, since i bought it 2nd hand, im not sure they will allow it...i just wanted a play 5 for the home garage gym… i hope i can somehow add it, but when i try to set it up, it gets to where it shows up and says speaker has been recycled...cannot add...
I think if it was deactivated during the weeks that Sonos was doing that as part of the trade up process, there’s no chance of recovery.
Airgetlam wrote:
I think if it was deactivated during the weeks that Sonos was doing that as part of the trade up process, there’s no chance of recovery.
Yeah if so then i get an amp that has Bluetooth and drill a hole and rewire it for the garage gym
MoZoY wrote:
z0n0es wrote:
yes !
Disclaimer, please be aware that the opening of this device exposes you to electrical shock risks.
As mentionnend before my play 5 was shut down during the 21 days of its recycle mode. After what I removed the WLAN module.
My first attemp idea was to keep only the power board from the Sonos, and replace the Sonos logic board with an Arylic Pro board I had lying around.
The GPIO-like port exposes most of the CS44800 DAC pins, especialy the I2S protocol pins that I could output from the Arylic bord, but I didn’t managed yet to power up the DAC.
But overall, with the Sonos logic board reinserted, the device still starts, and won’t connect anymore because of the missing WLAN board. The line-in jack passthrough works after the play 5 has booted up, so I only soldered some wires from the jack and placed the Arylic board into the bottom of the play 5. And it still work since 5-6 months now.
I understand you performed this mod before Sonos had a chance to brick the device, by removing the wlan module. Any idea if this will work AFTER the device has been put into recycle mode?
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