This post resonates with me. I got into software development when I was working as a tester and the developers didn't have time to fix the things I wanted fixing. I learned how to fix some things myself, mostly UI related issues.
I think it's important that teams have a mechanism for allowing developers time to work on what they most want to work on. When an issue you care personally about gets put on a backlog with a low priority, all that motivation you had for fixing it goes to waste. Who better to fix that issue that the person that feels passionate about fixing it, at the time when they feel most motivated to do so.
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.
I think it's important that teams have a mechanism for allowing developers time to work on what they most want to work on. When an issue you care personally about gets put on a backlog with a low priority, all that motivation you had for fixing it goes to waste. Who better to fix that issue that the person that feels passionate about fixing it, at the time when they feel most motivated to do so.