A DIY Sonos Play 5 Built From an IKEA Storage Box and a Raspberry Pi

Sonos powered speakers are well known for their sound quality and extensive feature set. Of those features, the most-used is probably the music streaming capability. Each Sonos speaker is completely self-contained, so you can easily stream to any individual speaker in your home. The only problem is that Sonos speakers are very expensive — about $500 for the Sonos Play 5. Instructables user Erguro thought he could build something comparable for far less money, and has shared a build log on the process.

The result of his efforts is the Erguro-One, which was designed to mimic the sound quality, features, and aesthetics of a Sonos speaker. When it comes to speaker sound quality, the enclosure is just as important as the speakers themselves. Different materials will resonate in different ways, and a poorly-chosen enclosure material can easily ruin the sound quality of otherwise high-quality speakers. That’s why high-end stereos generally have very heavy speaker boxes. For his enclosure, Erguro used an IKEA KUGGIS storage box, which is made from PET plastic.

That box was modified to house the Bose speakers and subwoofer. The modifications included the addition of a thick MDF panel for support, and 3D-printed trim pieces to hide the speaker mounting screws. A Raspberry Pi running Volumio is used for streaming music to the speaker. That drives the speakers through an Allo Piano 2.1 DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter), which feeds two class-D amplifiers. One handles the subwoofer, while the other, which was salvaged from a commercial amplifier, handles the stereo speakers. Erguro reports that the Erguro-One sounds almost as good as the real Sonos Play 5, and was significantly cheaper to build.