Using a Raspberry Pi to make an AirPlay speaker

If you're one of those people who loves to tinker with stuff and try to create functional equipment in unconventional ways, then you'll appreciate what blogger Jordan Burgess did -- he made an AirPlay speaker receiver out of a Raspberry Pi.

For those who haven't seen me waving my Raspberry Pi in front of the camera on TUAW TV Live, it's an amazing little single-board Linux machine that sells for about $35 (Model B). Burgess wanted to bring his "good, but dated speaker system into the 21st century by enabling wireless streaming of music to it." Sounds like the job for an AirPort Express ($99) or an Apple TV ($99), doesn't it?

Well, Burgess didn't need another wireless router, nor did he need the video features of the Apple TV. And if he bought AirPlay-enabled speakers, he'd be paying at least $325 or so for a decent set.

So Burgess took his existing Raspberry Pi Model B, added a 2 GB SD card (that's what the Raspberry Pi uses for storage) and a cheap USB WiFi adapter and turned it into an AirPlay speaker receiver. Burgess doesn't think the sound is audiophile quality, although a commenter on Lifehacker noted that the sound quality is "*fantastic*."

Are any other TUAW readers using a Raspberry Pi as a hobby machine? If your hacks are somehow related to Apple, we'd love to hear from you.

Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation

[via Lifehacker]