Add AirPlay To Your Old 30-Pin iPhone Dock With The Auris Skye Kickstarter Project
Old iPhone docks are a depressing sight in this world of Lightning cables and connectors, sitting with their 30-pin connector exposed and lonely. There are a number of Bluetooth accessories that you can use with those devices, including one from accessory-maker Auris called the freeDa. But their latest project is a similar attachment that brings AirPlay and DLNA streaming to those docks.
The Auris Skye is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, and connects via Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth. It lets you stream music from your iPhone, iPad touch, Android or Windows Phone and Mac or PC on your local Wi-Fi network, using either Apple’s proprietary AirPlay streaming protocol or DLNA on Android and Windows. It’s also Wi-Fi Direct enabled, so that you don’t even need to have a Wi-Fi router or network available to use it.
Skye also doesn’t need a separate power source, as it uses the power from the dock itself, which would normally be used to charge the iOS device sitting in the cradle. The Auris team says they’ve tested it with a range of speakers already, and so far haven’t found one that doesn’t work, and they offer a control app to get you set up.
AirPlay can be tricky to get right, though the recent incarnations of the tech in consumer products have all performed reliably, so Auris has a lot to deliver with this project and a shipping timeline of December, 2013. Hopefully the company learned some lessons from its first go-around, however, because this is a very useful accessory to have.