It doesn’t help that most Bluetooth audio modules are opaque, their development toolchains difficult to obtain. Some speakers are amenable to custom firmware, but only a small minority have attracted a software development community. Our main obstacle is a side effect of market diversity: with so many different speakers, a hack posted for one speaker wouldn’t apply to another. As a consequence, nowadays it’s not unusual to have a small collection of them, a fertile field for hacking.īut many surplus speakers are put on a shelf for “do something with it later” only to collect dust. Some have even become branded promotional giveaway items. What was once an expensive luxury is now widely accessible thanks to a prolific landscape of manufacturers mass producing speakers to fit every taste and budget. Portable Bluetooth speakers have joined the club of ubiquitous personal electronics.