The Raspbery Pi project is a darling little exercise in ingenuity. It looks like a USB thumb drive, but instead of 2GB of flash, it’s a fully functional computer running Debian Linux, featuring a 700 MHz ARM 11 processor, 128 MB of RAM, a USB port, and an Ethernet port… all for just $35. Splendid, splendid geekiness. Hanging this from your car keys, you can literally get connected anywhere. But where’s the Apple angle?
Try this one for size: it supports AirPlay.
It’s a little hacky in the video above, but as you can see, one of the Raspberry Pi developers was successful in hooking the device up to an HDMI-connected TV, then getting Airplay Video pumping through it via his iPad.
Awesome. This is an AirPlay solution for your television that is $65 cheaper than an Apple TV. The only problem is that while the Raspberry Pi is in production, there’s still no ship date, so if you’re looking to graft AirPlay onto your existing set, you’ll have to wait a little bit longer.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
15 responses to “This $35 Computer-On-A-Stick Is All You Need To Bring AirPlay To Any HDTV”
Does anyone else think that looks like a fat Steve Jobs?
Hells yes! My first thought to.
Apple will sue Pi – buy them while you still can. For $35 it pretty much is the only reason to get an Apple TV anyway.
Totally thought the same thing when I first saw it. Â Lol
what … no wireless chip? ;)
probably doesnt do airplay mirroring for ipad games & etc
Couple of things:
1. Current Raspberry Pi boards are credit card-sized, not keychain sized. The Ethernet, USB and HDMI jacks alone are bigger than a keychain.
2. The AirPlay stuff is some already-available Linux software that’s been made to run on this ARM-based Linux system. If you’re not a command line person, you’ll be learning new skills to do this.
3. The AirPlay stuff isn’t likely to be included with the board – as an education-targeted project, they’re going to be including some standard Linux distributions with the board.
4. The first 10,000 boards are in production now, and expected to ship at the end of the month.
Model A will have 128 MiB RAM memory, one USB port and no Ethernet controller, and will cost US$25, while model B will contain 256 MiB RAM memory, two USB ports and a 10/100 Ethernet controller and will cost US$35.
Wikipedia is back up – you can do fact checking now.
Agreed. I thought the same thing when I saw the top image as well.
Absolutely, that was my first though when I saw the picture.Â
hmmm.. Nice idea!
I think more & more options for AirPlay support will emerge. AirPlay streaming already works on my Boxee Box & I’m loving it..!
Trololololol
For the price of $35, if it works as advertised, it sounds like a great little gadget.
Dr. Nir Hus MD., PhD,
 General Surgery, Trauma and Critical Care Medicine.Â
 Miami Florida
 http://www.NirHus.com
 http://www.Nir-Hus.org
 @NirHus:twitterÂ
It’s too bad Apple and Samsung don’t play nice, it would be great to have an Airplay app for my Samsung Smart TV…. Guess I’ll buy this instead.
that is NOT the /RaspberryPi. the real one is not shaped like a usb device.
http://elinux.org/RaspberryPiB…Â that is the correct device. how could you make such a big mistake ?