Now that Bose annouced they will discontinue the app to control their Soundtouch speakers in February 2026, wouldn’t it be an idea to replace the software running on those devices by volumio?
The software on the devices is a linux system anyway, and the app did little more than what volumio does, volumio being way better at it, than the Bose software ever was.
Unfortunately I don’t have the necessary skills to attack this myself, but I think it would be a valuable solution for Volumio (image all the users that own such devices and who won’t be able to control them anymore being offered a solution to keep on using them.)
I know, I could attach a Raspi to the Aux In Port of the devices and have Volumio available on them. But it would be even smoother to make it work out of the box on them, without the need of additional hardware.
And as Bose just “kills” their own hardware and stop delivering security updates, there should not be a copyright issue if users chose to replace the “dead” software on their device by a solution that keeps them alive.
So in the past, when the software on the devices was updated, they didn’t touch the bootloader?
Wouldn’t it be possible not to touch the bootloader and only replace the system partition? The bootloader only provides the minimal configuration for the system to boot, but the important part runs on another partition.
But I might be too optimistic with my minimal set of skills on that matter
Well they prob. did but Bose knows the exact address where the loader starts and end. We don’t.
The bootloaders takes care which OS to load, for sure Bose isn’t looking for Volumio.
what platform are we talking about (brand model)? Is the linux filesystem, more precise the boot partition, reachable? This is not just about the boot loader, to get volumio running, one also needs to access to the boot script. Does the board expose pins for a boot console? If not, no volumio community developer will even consider working touching it.
Interesting idea, but without open access, no chance.
The only way I see this working as a solution beyond a singular brand is some approach where the signal path is identified and something like a Pi can be “shoehorned” into the device hooking directly to the amp and provide signal…basically, turning any device into just a powered speaker.
