Build Your Own BabelPod to Connect an Audio Source to Your HomePod via Bluetooth

By all accounts, the Apple HomePod is a decent entry in the home voice assistant market. Like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, it can answer questions, control your smart home devices, and play your music. Unfortunately, that music is currently limited to what’s in your Apple Music library or what you send via AirPlay.

Andrew Faden was frustrated by those obvious limitations—he couldn’t use other services like Spotify, and could only play music from Apple devices with AirPlay. So, he set out to build something better, and the result is BabelPod. This device addresses the HomePod’s shortcomings by acting as an intermediary between sources and outputs. With BabelPod, you can play music on the HomePod from any device with BlueTooth, or simply with the line-in.

If that sounds like something you want, you’re in luck: Faden has provided thorough instructions on how to build your own. All you’ll need is a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a USB audio adapter (or any kind of sound card). With the Pi setup in headless mode with SSH and VNC installed, you can then install NodeJS, the Airtunes Node library, and Faden’s BabelPod software.

Getting everything configured will take a bit of work, but Faden’s instructions are clear. Once everything is installed, you simply connect to the Pi as a Bluetooth speaker. BabelPod will then feed that audio to the Apple HomePod with AirPlay. There are a few small glitches, like a delay of a couple of seconds, but overall it seems to work nicely.