Why would you do this rather than buy an Airport Express? The cost of the Raspberry Pi, wifi adapter and a basic USB soundcard add up to as much as the real thing, but you spend hours configuring software and end up with a flakey solution. It's great that you can do this, but why not save time and money by buying the real thing? You also get bit perfect optical output and a pretty decent wireless router.
If you already have the ingredients to do this, then it may be a cheaper solution.
My RaspberryPi has been a few things since I bought it (a print server, a file server, a web server) but I never really settled on anything and for the past couple of months it has sat in a drawer.
I've now just re-purposed it as an Airplay speaker in less than an hour for no extra cost.
I will probably purchase a smaller USB WiFi dongle (@£8.99 on Amazon) but even including the cost of the Raspberry Pi (~£34 total), that's less than half the cost of an Airport Express (£80).
Hacking ones own solution has benefits: control over the technology, freedom from proprietary interests, ability to enhance the behavior, configuration and customization, integration with other technologies, knowledge of how to build other things later..., etc
Oh, and if I get bored, I can always reuse the hardware for something else.
Probably the same reason why I garden instead of buying from the grocery store, or why I grind my own meat for my burgers. Sometimes, if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.
Came here to say just this. I never understand these like "money saving hacks" that cost very close to what an actual, legitimate product intended for this purpose would cost, with a ton of work, and less reliability.
Well, it's not called "Hacker" News for nothing. CNet is over there.
Anyways, apart from AirPlay (AirPort Express), my RPi is performing XBMC / media center capabilities (Apple TV), streaming network backup (Time Capsule), motion-activated security camera, software-defined radio and X10 home automation. I will shortly be interfacing the GPIO to an SSR and thermocouple so I can use it as a PID for beer brewing and smoking fish. For $35 and 2w of power, that's pretty good.
"Well, it's not called "Hacker" News for nothing. CNet is over there."
Cool diss, hope it made you feel better about yourself I guess? Anyway, I simply pointed out that the author framed this as a cost saving tool when it really isn't. Say its a fun hack and I have no problem, but to call this thing a moneysaving hack when it doesnt save a whole lot of money and produces a lower quality device. But hey, your one line diss sounds better so why bother with logic.
For brewing the beer it should be fine. Be careful with the fish though you'll want quicker responses so you'll probably not want it doing all of the other things at once. I've thought about using an Avr or a pic for that before so that it can be much more responsive as a paid controller.
Any chance of a few links to look into the various things you've done with the RPi? Thinking of getting one in the new year and some of those projects sound really interesting.
