Create Your Own Sonos Without Spending $1200

I have been working on creating a home sound environment without investing in Sonos, mainly because it just seemed overpriced.

Over the last couple weeks I have built what is essentially a Sonos equivalent without having to invest all that money.

I now have a home wireless stereo environment that allows me to stream my audio from either Pandora or iTunes to any audio device in the house using my iPhone as the remote control for all of the applications.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Buy an Apple Airport Express wireless hub for $99 and connect it to your home audio system.
2. Download PandoraJam. This makes Pandora a native app on your Mac instead of a web app. You can demo it for free, the cost is $15 to buy it.
3. Buy Rowmote on the App Store for your iPhone for $.99
4. Install the Rowmote Helper app on your Mac. This allows the Rowmote application to control your Mac applications such as Pandora just like your Apple IR remote does from anywhere on your wireless network. It also lets you control any other application that you can control from your regular remote, such as DVD Player, etc.
5. Install the Remote app for controlling iTunes on your iPhone

Once you have all of these these pieces in place and go thru the various authentication steps to authenticate your iPhone as a remote in both iTunes and Rowmote, you can control iTunes and Pandora from anywhere in your house, and send the output to any audio device on your Apple Airport network.

Including the cable to connect your Airport Express to your home audio, it will cost you about $140 total to get all of this working.

I can have audio from Pandora playing in one room and iTunes in another.

If you want more details or have problems getting this working, let me know.