Dust off those vintage speakers and breathe new life into them with Bang & Olufsen’s new project transforming them into WiFi Smart speakers.

As everything becomes internet-connected we’re quickly diminishing all of our tech from yester-year, but there’s a new reason not to throw away those old speakers. High-end speaker makers Bang & Olufsen have partnered with HiFiBerry to launch Beocreate 4, an open-source circuit board that re-invigorates your speakers with the power of WiFi connectivity.

The Beocreate 4 alone works as a digital amplifier for speakers, but add a Raspberry Pi and it gains Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. Fortunately its as simple as plugging the Raspberry Pi into the amplifier, you don’t need to solder them together or do anything technical. The Beocreate 4’s software makes it capable to play music via Airplay, Bluetooth, or Spotify when connected with a Pi.

By itself the Beocreate 4 is capable of driving up to four 4-8 Ohm speakers with its 4-channel amplifier, 2×30 watts and 2×60 watts. It’s not the easiest way to bring your old speakers into the Smart generation (Chromecast Audio works quite well) but with Raspberry Pi power the software is open-source and opens up a world of possibility with your analogue speakers.

Respect to Bang & Olufsen for not just bringing out new speakers that work with Wi-Fi and giving old speakers a chance to be loved again. If you want a Beocreate it will set you back £149/$189 but if you’re technologically minded it could be just what those old speaker systems need.

Buy it and find out more here: www.hifiberry.com/shop/beocreate/beocreate-4-channel-amplifier