Firmware hacks are rejuvenating Spotify’s Car Thing before the company bricks it
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Canterrain
Ars Scholae Palatinae
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Josh Hendrickson here:
(And long time reader every once in a blue moon commenter)
Thanks for covering this and for the shoutout! It’s true, the hardware on this is pretty weak by modern standards (cue a few people pointing out early smartphones had more power).
But it makes sense. Spotify designed this hardware to be a glorified webpage device, and tuned accordingly.
The good news is the Things Lab people (formerly Car Hax) have embraced this fact and put together quite a few projects, and more are arriving everyday. Desk Thing is fantastic.
(And long time reader every once in a blue moon commenter)
Thanks for covering this and for the shoutout! It’s true, the hardware on this is pretty weak by modern standards (cue a few people pointing out early smartphones had more power).
But it makes sense. Spotify designed this hardware to be a glorified webpage device, and tuned accordingly.
The good news is the Things Lab people (formerly Car Hax) have embraced this fact and put together quite a few projects, and more are arriving everyday. Desk Thing is fantastic.
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I assume that the car issues are related to a binary blob for the BT/WiFi chip as that seems to be pretty common for these sorts of things. Probably the best we can hope for is figuring out how to use that blob as is. This might be interesting for me. I mostly use my Alexa for streaming Apple Music and I'm sure my Son would love one of these as an Apple Music streaming device if these end up being cheap to pick up used.
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Canterrain
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Bluetooth connection is a real conundrum for this thing, for a variety of reasons including the use of a proprietary Apple chip that can’t be open sourced.
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Canterrain
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Alas good luck. Secondary market is ridiculous. Often seeing listings for $300. It’s maddening.
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586 posts in 9 years is actually pretty respectable!
It makes me super happy when the subject of a story pops up in general, but with an established account? That's the good stuff.
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Canterrain
Ars Scholae Palatinae
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So true story (that I told not too long ago deep in many pages deep of comments)
Waaaaaay back in the day (as in 2017), Ars Technica was looking for a seasoned reporter, and I lamented that despite being a good writer I could never seem to apply for these jobs because I had no professional expeirences.
I got a really helpful response from @pokrface :
So that's what I did too.
Managed to find a freelancing gig that didn't require much experience. Which got me to the point that I managed to break into full time writing. I've now written for How-To Geek, PCMag, PCWorld, and more, covering Android, Windows, Apple, and so on.. And for a while there, I was the Editor-in-Chief of a site called Review Geek... a site that focused on Product Reviews (May Review Geek rest in peace). Now I run an up and coming YouTube channel that's been successful beyond my expectations.
I owe it all to the good people at Ars Technica. Y'all hold a special place in my heart.
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1. How did you find the open source repo?
2. Did you find any related hardware from which you were able to leverage software?
Nice job, by the way. Always enjoy reading about persistent efforts to repurpose EOLed hardware that bear fruit.
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I'm just here for the lurking comment....
Also, Spotify... We don't want to do this thing any more,
hobbyist, can we have it?
Spotify... Mmm kinda.
Also, Spotify... We don't want to do this thing any more,
hobbyist, can we have it?
Spotify... Mmm kinda.
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so we jtag the lurkers and update their uboot?
<looks over at raspberry pi with clicky-wheel and 1.3" oled> You know, "one day" I really should get this thing actually playing music.. It's a thing, it's on my desk, but it aint no DeskThing
<looks over at raspberry pi with clicky-wheel and 1.3" oled> You know, "one day" I really should get this thing actually playing music.. It's a thing, it's on my desk, but it aint no DeskThing
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Ugh that sucks but hopefully it's at least getting into the hands of someone who can/will use it scalpers be damned.
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I don't own a CarThing and don't use Spotify, but thank you for keeping yet another gadget from becoming disposable junk!
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Asking over MSRP for used and that 2-3x on NIB... for unsupported, discontinued hardware. I would have been interested, but don't already own one. So I guess I won't. Looks like great results from the hacking efforts, though.
p.s. the links that should go to GitHub are instead YouTube tracking redirect links presumably copied straight out of the description of a video; please clean the links!
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Canterrain
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Someone who claimed not to be a Spotify employee randomly posted it in the early days of the Car Hax scene. How they found it without being an employee feels like a mystery. It went unnoticed by most media because of that. So basically, I was in the right place... right time. I shouldn't get credit for "discovering" this so much as being the first to loudly get the word out that it exists. I stumbled across the information... but in doing so helped the knowledge go from niche to widespread. Trying not to overstate my importance here. The people at the Thing Labs Discord are doing a lot more great work than me to keep the Car Thing out of the ground.
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Candidate for runner up here...
I'm really hoping someone can get this thing working with phones again. It makes me want to take a crack at it but I'm not sure I'd be of much help.
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Pre-ordered the CarThing. Am still a happy user. Really hoping someone much smarter than me can take a crack at it and really return the CarThing functionality. Right now, there are a few repos that look promising to return some features, but not really like for like .. yet. I can totally understand the difficult lift though, it's hardware designed around a specific task; most DIY/hackers/tinkerers in the larger swaths take advantage of more generic modules (esp32, ect) and can get away with hacking things together (maybe even inefficiency) with well documented and well maintained open source repositories. It takes dedicated people to really dive in and crack purpose-built hardware. My understanding is Spotify won't release the special sauce for the actual app integration, so I doubt we get it totally ported, but for now, I am hopefully a smart hobbyist will keep me from recycling this.
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Honestly, this is not that underpowered, and can probably run all sorts of interesting things. Granted, running a web browser on it is probably a bad idea, hence its struggles with a "single web page". But with these specs, anything native should be relatively snappy. As another commenter pointed out, blobs are probably an issue with Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, but that's nothing unusual for embedded devices.
I would love to make a postmarketOS port for that thing, as I have done for several other devices. Unfortunately, as you have all noticed, most online listings are above retail price. Maybe they will drop after December? It also doesn't look available outside the USA. That's something I would drop 20€ on, not 200, especially given the time I would have to spend on it afterwards.
I would love to make a postmarketOS port for that thing, as I have done for several other devices. Unfortunately, as you have all noticed, most online listings are above retail price. Maybe they will drop after December? It also doesn't look available outside the USA. That's something I would drop 20€ on, not 200, especially given the time I would have to spend on it afterwards.
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The Apple chip is necessary if you want to talk to iPhones over Bluetooth. Apple only allows RFCOMM communication to apps over their proprietary iAP2 endpoint which requires authentication responses provided by the chip. You can only get the documentation for their wrapper protocol and buy the chip if you enroll in their development program, and all that stuff is under NDA. You can see why just "open sourcing" that might be a problem for whomever signed those NDAs.
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Jeeze that's wild. So does that mean a lot of those cheap wireless headphones just don't work with iPhones? I always knew they had worse functionality than they would on Android but given those requirements I wonder if they work at all.
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If you want your device to send and receive arbitrary data to/from an iOS app over USB or Bluetooth, you need to enroll in the Apple MFi program and implement iAP2. To only receive audio, you can use the standard A2DP profile.
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Although not strictly on topic, I couldn't pass on the opportunity to remind everyone that Spotify is platforming Joe Rogan, paying the guy big bucks to host his JAQ-fest on their platform. And that he's publicly endorsed Trump before the elections. I was a longtime Spotify paid subscriber but just couldn't do that anymore with a clear conscience so I cancelled. And I'm not even an American. If you too are not okay with that but still use Spotify, maybe take a moment to reflect on whether taking a stance on what has just transpired is worth the slight inconvenience of having to recreate your playlists elsewhere.
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I would love to send you mine but 20€ probably doesn't cover shipping from the PNW, and realistically I'd probably want to pocket a few bucks for the hassle on top.
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I'm quite happy with Tidal, and they reportedly pay their artists the best out of the music streaming services.
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Canterrain
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I'm in Ohio and would be willing to take it off your hands for a reasonable price... keeping in mind it will be bricked and Spotify offered refunds for these things. I want to keep them out of the ground and will repurpose it.
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I'm kind of hoping that there will be a glut of these on eBay for cheap after they get bricked. Not everyone wants or knows how to DIY firmware on a device like this, so for those people the Car Thing will be useless. For the current market average (used going for $100+), it's not really worth it to me.
My plan for this would be to pair it with my Prusa MK3S 3D printer and use it as an Octoprint interface. I already have the Raspberry Pi running Octoprint, so hopefully this idea is not too hard to execute.
My plan for this would be to pair it with my Prusa MK3S 3D printer and use it as an Octoprint interface. I already have the Raspberry Pi running Octoprint, so hopefully this idea is not too hard to execute.
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Oh. That makes sense. Cool thank you! That also explains some of the reduced functionality especially for cheaper headphones. Sweet.
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I like the idea of a separate display and control for music, but these things are only interesting as long as they are much cheaper than the cost of the parts to make them. otherwise keeping a player minimized or on a 3rd/4th screen will have to do!
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If you like such player to be hooked to an active speaker/separate amp, then it's not a bad idea.
I'm toying with such project, recently, but building from components like a Pi and and ampli+DAC hat. Pimoroni's Pirate Audio has a very small screen but otherwise is an excellent product.
Hook it up to a nice, compact active speaker like the Ruark MR1 and you basically have a Sonos replacement (but without their crappy app
)The player itself will cost you probably around between € 50 and € 60 if you use a Pi Zero 2, depending on how many things you can recycle (SD card, power supply). And you don't need to keep your computer or your phone busy streaming, you only use them to control the player.
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The Radxa Zero is a single-board computer that uses the Amlogic S905Y2 processor, which is part of the same S905 family as the S905D2
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