AirPlay Upgrade

About

I always used my stereo with my iPhone inside it's iPod dock to listen to my iTunes music. Unfortunately with the upgrade to iPhone 5 the old iPod dock becomes outdated. The original Apple adapter was to expensive for me and the china made adapter was not working with my stereo. I had to use my old audio cable.

As I saw the CHIP the first time the idea was born -> the chip will act as an AirPlay server where I can stream my music to.

Wiring

Once the chip arrives I disassembled my (not working) china dock adapter and interconnected the power and UART pins:

• iPod dock pin 23 - USB 5V+ - U13R pin 1

• iPod dock pin 16 - USB ground - U13L pin 1

• iPod dock pin 11 - serial ground - U14L pin 1

• iPod dock pin 12 - serial TX - U14L pin 2

• iPod dock pin 13- serial RX - U14L pin 3

Remark: my first try, only connected power, fails as the stereo did not switch from "iPod connecting" to "iPod connected" state. My assumption is that it tries to communicate with the attached device to set up AiR mode. Once connected the UART the stereo switches immediately to "iPod connected" state and I did not continue to dig into the communication there.

A quick try and I was able to playback a mp3 located on the CHIP via my stereo's iPod dock. Great!

Conclusions

The next steps where quite easy. Just install and configure shairport and voilà my stereo has AirPlay capabilities!

The next step will be to build a nice box...

Stay tuned for updates.

One last remark: no warranty that my solution will work with your hardware - perhaps I was just lucky! You can rebuild my solution, but at your own risk!