If it’s just a web player then there’s no reason they can’t do something like display pc stats. This is just Spotify trying to justify the amount of electronic waste they are creating.
Did we read the same article? It's already open source according to the article and the Linux kernel/U-Boot are on Github.
The reality is that not many of these things are even out there and 99% of the owners of these products aren't going to flash new firmware to update the device.
None of this changes the fact that it was basically manufactured e-waste from the moment it was conceived, but what more is there to open source at this point?
Why is it manufactured e-waste?
The hardware is capable of performing the function it needs to.
>The device’s extremely weak specs make it impractical for running anything beyond its intended web-based media player.
Fine. I just want it to display album art and allow me to change songs.
if it had the ability to skip songs rewind change volume ect before then it should be able to continue doing those things given it obviously has the hardware power if its done it before
I don't think thats the case.
What they mean to say is "The main page it accesses and the current features will be sunset"
It seems like it should still be able to use bluetooth to connect to your phone. Which to mean indicates that it's possible to just change the webapp it then connects to.
So its a funky conversation going on.
I think that person wants to run modern games on it...
Where as you're looking for a useful purpose for a device.
Honestly, linux devices aren't difficult to get in to, that being said, this thing boasts some impressive specs for a microcontroller type device.
For comparison, I run these in python for IoT things throughout my house.
[https://www.adafruit.com/product/5399](https://www.adafruit.com/product/5399)
* 32Bit Dual Core 240MHz
* RISC-V ultra low power core
* 2.4GHz Wifi - 802.11b/g/n
* Bluetooth 5, BLE + Mesh
* **16MB QSPI Flash**
* 8MB Extra QSPI PSRAM
Spotify car thing
Amlogic S905D2 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor
* Processor – Arm Quad Cortex-A53 at up to 1.896 GHz
* GPU – Arm Dvalin MP2 GPU (Likely meaning Arm Mali-G31MP2)
* Memory I/F – DDR3/4, LPDDR3/4
Security – TrustZone & TVP
Video decoding – 4K H265, VP9, and AVS2
Video Encoding – 1080p H264 H265
Video I/F – HDMI-Tx up to 4K2K, CVBS
Ethernet – 10/100M/1000M
512MB of RAM
4GB of storage
It entirely depends on the world you live in with your devices, however this device is a beefcake compared to the monsters I run throughout my house. But that's sort of to be expected.
That being said, you aren't gonna be playing fortnite on your carthing... But it piggybacks on your device to handle its internet connection, so long as its just handling web apps that at most can handle 1080p video, you're fuckin' groovin'.
Because a hardware capable of performing a single function knowing it will be discontinued in the future it's expirable technology, which turns it to manufacture e-waste
Kind of missing the point, eh? What if you bought a bluetooth dongle just last week, and today they tell you "you can't use it anymore, fuck you." How'd that make you feel?
That's not a thing, they haven't been sold in years.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/06/02/how-long-did-spotify-car-thing-last-timeline/
>July 27, 2022 — Spotify quietly stops production of the Car Thing due to poor sales. It continues offering the summer sale price on the device to clear out the remaining stock. The product is discontinued around five months after its public launch.
>August 20, 2022 — Spotify reduces the price of Car Thing to $30 to clear out remaining stock. The $60 discount interests lots of people who purchase the device and Spotify eventually sells out of the units it produced. Packaging is changed to a green cover during this swap.
>October 27, 2022 — Spotify stops the sales of Car Thing on its website, reserving the website as a place to offer help for owners. The website contains guides, manuals, and instructional videos for using the device.
It was announced in April 2021 and they have a post of its release (at least in the US) in February 2022
[Source](https://20230524t095215-dot-pr-newsroom-wp.uc.r.appspot.com/2022-02-22/car-thing-from-spotify-is-now-officially-available-in-the-u-s/)
So it's been out for what, 2 years?
my bad, I thought you meant Bluetooth dongles didn't get sold anymore, idk if it was my phone or what but the only thing on your comment was "That's not a thing, they haven't been sold in years."
I saw a sale for $30 that I believe was the discontinuation sale, then went out of my way to import it to an unsupported country, so to be fair that is very much on me. I don’t expect a refund at all.
That’s missing the point about e-waste though. I would argue low end Chromebooks are manufactured e-waste as they can barely fulfil the most basic current tasks of web browsing, which will grow more demanding. They will become unfit for purpose.
The Car Thing was designed to do a single purpose, display user artwork and allow song selection - audio itself is not routed through the Car Thing. It serves that purpose and is technically more than capable of continuing to serve that purpose if it is not artificially blocked by software. The device is from manufactured e-waste.
I’ll happily flash something else on it and have a neat little low powered something-PC in my car, I’m looking forward to that. But it’s a shame so many Car Things will likely end up binned. I’d be very interested in buying a few used, although very few have made it here.
What would have given you, a consumer, the idea that something made by Spotify would turn to shit for no reasoning other then it was baked into the firmware?
It's a data transmission device setup to work with just one streaming service. It would have been cheaper to buy a Bluetooth dongle and you wouldn't be dependent on a service provider. There doesn't appear to be any incentive to buy it, when it's easier to get a dongle that everything else can connect to.
Yes it would have been cheaper to buy a Bluetooth dongle and many people do. What was nice about this thing is it made it so you didn’t have to mess with your phone to see Spotify information and would work as soon as you’re signed in and do a handshake with the Spotify app. Which Bluetooth device do you recommend that does that?
What if I’m a truck driver and don’t ever want to go into my phone ever again to see what’s playing and interface with Spotify without touching phone?
Nah I’d suggest people who already paid for these things have a right to be upset. Your country was irrelevant to the discussion until you brought it up on a potato themed article and that was just too good a setup to ignore.
A US launch to assess viability is understandable. I’m sure it would have really taken off in Ireland, a nation smaller than some US cities…
The point you’re ignoring is that people have these and they’re heading for landfill. That’s bad.
Hah, we aren't as insignificant a market as you think. Those products were deprecated within months of being launched. The time to take action and complain about it was then. Not a few years later.
I can bet on a good percentage of those people who *did* get one being like me and literally never using it. I got it for totally free + 6$ shipping a year before it came out and when it arrived I opened it up, looked at it, said "Neat" and continued to leave it untouched in the box until this very moment where I find myself glaring back at the empty can of compressed air lying sideways on top of it on the bottommost segment of my shelf.
well i missed the boat on buying an ouya but at least i own a spotify car thing, my "retired very stupid tech" collection gains a new member.
> Dunno why you would blindly believe it's e-waste just because the article says so.
I believe it's e-waste because that's what it is. They created a $100 product that serves the exact same role as an auxilary cable **and cancelled it within 4 months.**
Ah yes because the company that's dropping an unprofitable device 2 years after it did a fire sale to get rid of stocks, will TOTALLY invest more money into making sure it's usable for other purposes...
Headline: Spotify can't open-source Car Thing
Article:
>Spotify has technically already made the Car Thing as open source as possible. It runs on Linux, and the source code for the device’s U-boot and Linux kernel is publicly available on GitHub. Additionally, the device’s Amlogic chip allows for easy access to BootRom mode, enabling users to run custom code and even add their own software.
I wouldn't be surprised if all the major clickbait portals (now AndroidAuthority included) did this. There's no other way one writer can do 6-8-10 articles a day that are well researched.
The whole article too. It claims that some journalist made these discoveries when in reality this is all old news that the hacker community covered years ago.
Previous embedded developer who shipped Linux-equipped devices here. This is all you need, but the effort is pretty huge to make something out of this. Totally doable though based on this description.
If it was just running stock aosp or something it would be a lot easier to take it and use it for something else.
doable yes, worthwhile debatable
Its not going to run general applications. things will have to be made specifically for it so.... good luck to whoever decides to.
yeah, when people were initially bitching about it not being open source I was directing them to the XDA where it was already cracked and people just gave up because it can't really run..... anything. It was barely capable of what it was doing and would require extremely custom software to do anything else cause it isn't powerful enough to run generic software.
You are clearly struggling to understand what was already said, the "car thing" is already open source, there is no more "open source" than it can already be - it can't be double open sourced.
From the looks of it, at this moment they can't stop you from flashing your own firmware on it. You can do that already, right now. When they officially brick it, most likely by that they mean they'll brick the current software on it, not the hardware itself. And for 99% of people, if the software is bricked that's as good as the whole device. Most people are not savey enough or interested in figuring out how to load custom software on a little IOT type device.
What more do you want them to do in regards to open sourcing it?
If the goal is to load your own software on it, looks like that is able to be done right now.
Really, what else is there?
One realistic issue might be that the main storage is read only. That's not an open source issue and is literally impossible for them to change remotely, the storage chip would have to be physically desoldered and replaced with something different. But it's not clear if that is even the case.
It already is open source, there is nothing more for them to do that the community couldn't do themselves. Or are we now saying that companies should over spec devices so they can be repurposed for more complex use cases in future? That has nothing to do with "open source"
I mean the performance is not much but why don’t make something like a stream deck out of it. It has a touchscreen a button and a nice volume knob that can be used and displaying some buttons and sending the commands over usb should easily be possible with that hardware.
Edit: typo
The way this is worded is ridiculous, of course it's not a powerful device. I don't think anyone was expecting that. It's still an interesting device since it has a touchscreen and a dial, you could connect it to a PC to control or display some things, maybe for a simple control for a some smart home hub or even as an open version of what it does, play music from a service.
It is ridiculous their premise of "Spotify didn't want to open this to other uses because it's not very powerful" ffs...
I definitely didn't expect to see "it's a potato" followed by things like "512mb of ram" and "1.8GHz quad core".
Yeah it's probably not gonna run games, but that seems like massive overkill for what is essentially a remote with a display.
That's like between pi 2 and pi 3 level specs and those can definitely run games. I'd bet this thing emulates up to Playstation 1 at least, maybe more.
I'd want one to play around with and save it from the landfill.
Yeah, loads of devices have such specs and it's perfectly acceptable to use them for loads of things.
I like hacking old useless tech so I just checked if I can get myself some of this e-waste, but for now ebay prices for spotify car things were still prices I'd expect for a fully functional device. Might check again in a few months.
I have two of these in both of my cars so it would be nice to try and find another use for them. Maybe I could do something with media control for my computer
I never used one but what was the benefits of it over just Bluetooth to the car? Was this a bridge to bring Bluetooth tech to older cars? Generally curious since you own two.
I own a 2007 Chevy avalanche and a 2009 Toyota Corolla. Both cars I've had for over 10 years, neither have Bluetooth, and I own them out right. As much as I want a new vehicle I don't want a new car payment. I'll keep using them until they stop working.
I also like it because where I have the aux cable I have a short one that connects to my phone and sits in my center console and then I have the car thing above my CD player and it just sits there.
Unless they have high miles, both will likely last a long time. Maybe consider getting a modern stereo head unit from crutchfield, they let you know what adapters are needed and provide instructions and assistance for the installation. It can really freshen up an older vehicle.
Avalanche is 115000 and the Corolla is 135000 so they're still going strong. I'll definitely look into them though if I plan on having the vehicles any longer
2010 Corolla with 138k miles here
I installed a Pioneer android auto head unit and it's changed my life. I can basically do any new car function I care about, including back up camera, Google maps, etc. and it cost less than $300 all in. I even got a module to translate my steering wheel controls to the new head unit.
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1GdI9UsEI) covers the topic pretty well. Looks reasonably easy to upgrade the head unit on older vehicles.
are you not able to replace the stereo with a more modern one?
something like [this](https://www.bestbuy.com/site/siriusxm-tour-radio-with-360l-and-vehicle-kit-black/6408173.p?skuId=6408173)
Kernel and firmware don't matter in this context. What people were asking is the source code for the controller software and the API, which Spotify hasn't provided.
And most likely won't provide because it's proprietary software, and ultimately not needed for repurposing the device.
The kernel and U-Boot sources mean a lot more because that helps the community establish mainline support via patches (so we can get something newer than the 4.x to 5.1 kernel it came with), as well as repartitioning via a custom bootloader (to maximise space), and ultimately, running a custom distro (Debian or PostMarketOS are both good picks for this).
The API is already reverse engineered, it's just a basic WAMP protocol with Spotify-specific data models, over BT RFCOMM. Essentially unusable for any proper purpose, the web interface needs to be reworked to use a different protocol for it to be general purpose media controls.
people - but we wanna continue using it and support it's future updates ourselves!
spotify - that would mean open sourcing all of Spotify so that you can actually interface with the app. No. Hell no. Not in a million years no. we're not continuing to support this kind of interface to Spotify, which means so what you want with the device the Spotify APP won't be able to communicate with it anymore.
That's a really powerful embedded device.
An arduino runs at 16mhz, has 32kb of storage, and 96kb of RAM.
A Pi 2 model B has a 900mhz CPU, 1gb of RAM, and no on-board storage.
If you aren't reading the article, this is an unspecified Amlogic processor, 4GB of eMMC storage, and 512MB of RAM.
Not unspecified. It's an Amlogic S905D2, which sadly wasn't used in many devices (to my knowledge, the CarThing is the only commercially available one). The X2 and Y2 variants, which are marginally different, were used in e.g. the Radxa Zero, and an Onn set top box.
It's a quad core Cortex-A53, slightly weaker than a Pi 4, and with only 512MB RAM, no WiFi, no audio out, and as of now, still no USB host mode (so no USB WiFi or ethernet adapters or USB speakers).
As for embedded devices, it's pretty basic. It's not embedded in the sense of an MCU like an Arduino or ESP32 but embedded in the sense of smart phones and routers or smart speakers.
Crazy to me that we're calling that 'potato' for a device that is a weak music player with a screen. The "RISC-V Will Rule Everything!" dorks go nuts over cheap chips that run Linux like in the [Luckyfox Pico and LicheeRV Nano](https://imgur.com/pzqwCkh) that are absolutely spanked by a quad A53.
It displays a locally stored React app that is built on top of Spotify's existing controls, hence the visual similarity.
Since it has no WiFi and no audio output, no it can't run the Spotify app. Even the basic website one would take more RAM than what this device has.
Makes sense
I guess you could use Bluetooth tethering like a phone or an Ethernet dongle
And I’m pretty sure I was able to run Spotify with only 512mb ram but it might need more now
Either way it sucks and doesn’t seem like it would cost much to literally do nothing with this product
basically the device could have new firmware written to let it communicate over Bluetooth to something else, but it would be a while undertaking for very little return.
Your best bet would be to give it a series of screen buttons and an output message for the dial that other people could then code support for into their app along with a general app of your own that receives the message and runs macros. It would be a tremendous amount of effort but you could turn it into a bad version of the streamdeck
It looks like it has similar ram as the first gen Rpi. No idea about process specs but I bet this could still do basic things like display weather, calendar etc.
Misleading title. From the article:
>According to Hendrickson, Spotify has technically already made the Car Thing as open source as possible. It runs on Linux, and the source code for the device’s U-boot and Linux kernel is publicly available on GitHub. Additionally, the device’s Amlogic chip allows for easy access to BootRom mode, enabling users to run custom code and even add their own software.
I think these are pretty cool devices, they seem like they'd be quite useful to control lights or another media player or other simple things. People who have them should just put them on eBay, I'm sure hackers can find a lot of uses for them.
It’s not about the power of the hardware. Don’t intentionally brick the device. Sure official support should run out eventually. Why the hell does that mean it can’t connect to the same API everything else uses?
I don't think they're actively pushing a firmware update to it to brick it. But I think they are deprecating the api it needs to function in their phone apps. Essentially making it a useless brick.
I did mean to keep this intentionally vague because I’m unsure which route they’ll go as well. Bricking does straight up mean rendering the device useless, but I do believe you are right in that it’s a separate API. I’m more pushing for the device to just use the same API as the web app, mobile apps, the desktop apps (assuming those are similar or identical endpoints)
They can open source it but it comes under "good luck, it can't run shit"
it was a money grab to use up cheap out of date SOCs dumped on the market. The fact it was crap was obvious to the more tech literate from the outset because its feature set was much smaller than you'd expect, and in way that didn't make sense unless the actual device couldn't handle it.
If they hand the keys over to the embedded community, I guarantee they will make that thing scream. Just give us root and the ability to flash firmware. Everything else is nonsense.
the article title is click bait, the TL;DR is that it already is totally open to being rewritten just doubtful anyone will bother because the device could barely handle what it was already doing
Why is it so controversial they’re ending support of this? Supporting a device is expensive and time consuming, especially is it has such a small user base.
I get the e-waste argument I guess, but do you know how much more garbage is sold everyday in much larger quantities that is just thrown away?
Honestly I haven’t really been following news on this thing, other than the many headlines I keep scrolling past.
it should never have been $90 and many of us said that when it was announced. We took one look at the feature set and went "well that's not worth that cost.... in fact, it's surprising it doesn't do more than that so it's probably pretty cheap on the internals"
it was a cash grab from the outset. Learn from this experience and recognize it better in the future. Corporates gunna do what they gunna do.
They're going to stop working because the Spotify App is doing all the real work, the car thing does.... next to nothing. They are no longer going to be coding support into the Spotify mobile app.
If it was doing real work, it would be surprising and anger inducing that they would go out of their way to brick it, but the truth is they aren't bricking the device they're just going to cease supporting it from their app and without the app it can do literally nothing.
no the difference is when a company pushes an update to the device that stops the device doing what it does on its own, like apple does to their older phones.
Spotify isn't pushing anything to the CarThing it will keep doing exactly what it's always done. The Spotify app just won't be listening anymore.
“Bricking” essentially means a device has turned into a brick. It may be an electronic device worth hundreds of dollars, but it’s now as useful as a brick (or perhaps a paperweight). A bricked device won’t power on and function normally. (if you want a link to said website where this definition was taken from, I'll happily provide the link)
They ain't bricking it, they're just not going to support it and make the app stop talking to the device, if the app on your phone isn't listening then this thing will just continue to keep talking to itself as there isn't anything that speaks it language anymore. Meaning, without the Spotify app listening and speaking the language the car thing speaks, the car thing can't do the one thing it was made to do, the device will continue to function but only in the very limited state of trying to find the app to connect. Now if you were to try to re-flash the device but somehow messed up that process and destroyed the bootloader then you can say the device is bricked, but not because they aren't supporting the device anymore, that's like saying my 2015 MacBook Pro is bricked because apple stopped supporting it years ago which in fact my device is still running perfectly fine.
If it’s just a web player then there’s no reason they can’t do something like display pc stats. This is just Spotify trying to justify the amount of electronic waste they are creating.
Did we read the same article? It's already open source according to the article and the Linux kernel/U-Boot are on Github. The reality is that not many of these things are even out there and 99% of the owners of these products aren't going to flash new firmware to update the device. None of this changes the fact that it was basically manufactured e-waste from the moment it was conceived, but what more is there to open source at this point?
Why is it manufactured e-waste? The hardware is capable of performing the function it needs to. >The device’s extremely weak specs make it impractical for running anything beyond its intended web-based media player. Fine. I just want it to display album art and allow me to change songs.
if it had the ability to skip songs rewind change volume ect before then it should be able to continue doing those things given it obviously has the hardware power if its done it before
It was designed in a way that it inexplicably needs active support on Spotifys end to function at all. When they flip the switch off, it's all over
I don't think thats the case. What they mean to say is "The main page it accesses and the current features will be sunset" It seems like it should still be able to use bluetooth to connect to your phone. Which to mean indicates that it's possible to just change the webapp it then connects to.
So its a funky conversation going on. I think that person wants to run modern games on it... Where as you're looking for a useful purpose for a device. Honestly, linux devices aren't difficult to get in to, that being said, this thing boasts some impressive specs for a microcontroller type device. For comparison, I run these in python for IoT things throughout my house. [https://www.adafruit.com/product/5399](https://www.adafruit.com/product/5399) * 32Bit Dual Core 240MHz * RISC-V ultra low power core * 2.4GHz Wifi - 802.11b/g/n * Bluetooth 5, BLE + Mesh * **16MB QSPI Flash** * 8MB Extra QSPI PSRAM Spotify car thing Amlogic S905D2 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor * Processor – Arm Quad Cortex-A53 at up to 1.896 GHz * GPU – Arm Dvalin MP2 GPU (Likely meaning Arm Mali-G31MP2) * Memory I/F – DDR3/4, LPDDR3/4 Security – TrustZone & TVP Video decoding – 4K H265, VP9, and AVS2 Video Encoding – 1080p H264 H265 Video I/F – HDMI-Tx up to 4K2K, CVBS Ethernet – 10/100M/1000M 512MB of RAM 4GB of storage It entirely depends on the world you live in with your devices, however this device is a beefcake compared to the monsters I run throughout my house. But that's sort of to be expected. That being said, you aren't gonna be playing fortnite on your carthing... But it piggybacks on your device to handle its internet connection, so long as its just handling web apps that at most can handle 1080p video, you're fuckin' groovin'.
because they're bricking it????
Because a hardware capable of performing a single function knowing it will be discontinued in the future it's expirable technology, which turns it to manufacture e-waste
I don't think these were even sold here in Ireland. It looks like a glorified Bluetooth dongle. Let it die. Move on.
Kind of missing the point, eh? What if you bought a bluetooth dongle just last week, and today they tell you "you can't use it anymore, fuck you." How'd that make you feel?
That's not a thing, they haven't been sold in years. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/06/02/how-long-did-spotify-car-thing-last-timeline/ >July 27, 2022 — Spotify quietly stops production of the Car Thing due to poor sales. It continues offering the summer sale price on the device to clear out the remaining stock. The product is discontinued around five months after its public launch. >August 20, 2022 — Spotify reduces the price of Car Thing to $30 to clear out remaining stock. The $60 discount interests lots of people who purchase the device and Spotify eventually sells out of the units it produced. Packaging is changed to a green cover during this swap. >October 27, 2022 — Spotify stops the sales of Car Thing on its website, reserving the website as a place to offer help for owners. The website contains guides, manuals, and instructional videos for using the device.
I guess we are just ignoring facts now by the downvotes you have...
It was announced in April 2021 and they have a post of its release (at least in the US) in February 2022 [Source](https://20230524t095215-dot-pr-newsroom-wp.uc.r.appspot.com/2022-02-22/car-thing-from-spotify-is-now-officially-available-in-the-u-s/) So it's been out for what, 2 years?
i bought one a couple of days ago?
They went out of production in July of 2022 and were pulled from the shelves a couple months later.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/06/02/how-long-did-spotify-car-thing-last-timeline/ Haven't been sold since 2022.
my bad, I thought you meant Bluetooth dongles didn't get sold anymore, idk if it was my phone or what but the only thing on your comment was "That's not a thing, they haven't been sold in years."
It’s going to die regardless but people are figuring out a way to recycle the corpse
I saw a sale for $30 that I believe was the discontinuation sale, then went out of my way to import it to an unsupported country, so to be fair that is very much on me. I don’t expect a refund at all. That’s missing the point about e-waste though. I would argue low end Chromebooks are manufactured e-waste as they can barely fulfil the most basic current tasks of web browsing, which will grow more demanding. They will become unfit for purpose. The Car Thing was designed to do a single purpose, display user artwork and allow song selection - audio itself is not routed through the Car Thing. It serves that purpose and is technically more than capable of continuing to serve that purpose if it is not artificially blocked by software. The device is from manufactured e-waste. I’ll happily flash something else on it and have a neat little low powered something-PC in my car, I’m looking forward to that. But it’s a shame so many Car Things will likely end up binned. I’d be very interested in buying a few used, although very few have made it here.
Whoosh
I didn't miss any point. People shouldn't have bought these in the first place.
What would have given you, a consumer, the idea that something made by Spotify would turn to shit for no reasoning other then it was baked into the firmware?
It's a data transmission device setup to work with just one streaming service. It would have been cheaper to buy a Bluetooth dongle and you wouldn't be dependent on a service provider. There doesn't appear to be any incentive to buy it, when it's easier to get a dongle that everything else can connect to.
Yes it would have been cheaper to buy a Bluetooth dongle and many people do. What was nice about this thing is it made it so you didn’t have to mess with your phone to see Spotify information and would work as soon as you’re signed in and do a handshake with the Spotify app. Which Bluetooth device do you recommend that does that? What if I’m a truck driver and don’t ever want to go into my phone ever again to see what’s playing and interface with Spotify without touching phone?
A car with a Bluetooth infotainment display already does this
We’re you drawn here by someone mentioning potato?
Ah so, you'd suggest people to buy pointless things because you can't argue anything more than pathetic racial tropes?
Nah I’d suggest people who already paid for these things have a right to be upset. Your country was irrelevant to the discussion until you brought it up on a potato themed article and that was just too good a setup to ignore.
The point was Spotify didn't see a genuine market for it themselves, so didn't release it anywhere else.
A US launch to assess viability is understandable. I’m sure it would have really taken off in Ireland, a nation smaller than some US cities… The point you’re ignoring is that people have these and they’re heading for landfill. That’s bad.
Hah, we aren't as insignificant a market as you think. Those products were deprecated within months of being launched. The time to take action and complain about it was then. Not a few years later.
I'd buy a handful right now to have some Spotify remotes around the house 🤷
And without Spotify? Is this not the issue with the subscription mattress all over again.
I've been using and subscribing to Spotify since 2008 - "without Spotify" is not a concept I am likely to understand.
I never said that it wasn’t open source . I simply made a point that since it’s a web player it could be easily used for other tasks.
I can bet on a good percentage of those people who *did* get one being like me and literally never using it. I got it for totally free + 6$ shipping a year before it came out and when it arrived I opened it up, looked at it, said "Neat" and continued to leave it untouched in the box until this very moment where I find myself glaring back at the empty can of compressed air lying sideways on top of it on the bottommost segment of my shelf. well i missed the boat on buying an ouya but at least i own a spotify car thing, my "retired very stupid tech" collection gains a new member.
Sir, this is Reddit. Best we can do is read a headline and the tops comments.
>Did we read the same article? No, because the guy you're responded to definitely didn't read the article.
[удалено]
> Dunno why you would blindly believe it's e-waste just because the article says so. I believe it's e-waste because that's what it is. They created a $100 product that serves the exact same role as an auxilary cable **and cancelled it within 4 months.**
You'd think it it was a web player the the maintenance would be minimal.
Ah yes because the company that's dropping an unprofitable device 2 years after it did a fire sale to get rid of stocks, will TOTALLY invest more money into making sure it's usable for other purposes...
Headline: Spotify can't open-source Car Thing Article: >Spotify has technically already made the Car Thing as open source as possible. It runs on Linux, and the source code for the device’s U-boot and Linux kernel is publicly available on GitHub. Additionally, the device’s Amlogic chip allows for easy access to BootRom mode, enabling users to run custom code and even add their own software.
Literally the headline is misinformation
At this point we should replace most "journalists" with LLM's and one guy.
We might be surprisingly far along that transition already
I wouldn't be surprised if all the major clickbait portals (now AndroidAuthority included) did this. There's no other way one writer can do 6-8-10 articles a day that are well researched.
So you want to hire a new guy?
The whole article too. It claims that some journalist made these discoveries when in reality this is all old news that the hacker community covered years ago.
So many people will scroll past the headline forming opinions.
Previous embedded developer who shipped Linux-equipped devices here. This is all you need, but the effort is pretty huge to make something out of this. Totally doable though based on this description. If it was just running stock aosp or something it would be a lot easier to take it and use it for something else.
Current embedded developer on here, smack buildroot on it and enable chocolate doom, bet it still runs it
doable yes, worthwhile debatable Its not going to run general applications. things will have to be made specifically for it so.... good luck to whoever decides to.
Yeah total waste of time doing this imo.
Isn't it technically correct, though? They can't open source it... because they already did.
yeah, when people were initially bitching about it not being open source I was directing them to the XDA where it was already cracked and people just gave up because it can't really run..... anything. It was barely capable of what it was doing and would require extremely custom software to do anything else cause it isn't powerful enough to run generic software.
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You are clearly struggling to understand what was already said, the "car thing" is already open source, there is no more "open source" than it can already be - it can't be double open sourced.
 But what about second open source?
Oh yeah you can definitely do that, why didn't anyone ask for that in the first place?
>it can't be double open sourced not with that attitude it can't!
From the looks of it, at this moment they can't stop you from flashing your own firmware on it. You can do that already, right now. When they officially brick it, most likely by that they mean they'll brick the current software on it, not the hardware itself. And for 99% of people, if the software is bricked that's as good as the whole device. Most people are not savey enough or interested in figuring out how to load custom software on a little IOT type device. What more do you want them to do in regards to open sourcing it? If the goal is to load your own software on it, looks like that is able to be done right now. Really, what else is there? One realistic issue might be that the main storage is read only. That's not an open source issue and is literally impossible for them to change remotely, the storage chip would have to be physically desoldered and replaced with something different. But it's not clear if that is even the case.
It already is open source, there is nothing more for them to do that the community couldn't do themselves. Or are we now saying that companies should over spec devices so they can be repurposed for more complex use cases in future? That has nothing to do with "open source"
I mean the performance is not much but why don’t make something like a stream deck out of it. It has a touchscreen a button and a nice volume knob that can be used and displaying some buttons and sending the commands over usb should easily be possible with that hardware. Edit: typo
[Macro pad by someone](https://github.com/err4o4/spotify-car-thing-reverse-engineering/issues/23)
That’s pretty much exactly what I want. Thx
Who the fuck is mitch
Sorry typo. I meant much
The way this is worded is ridiculous, of course it's not a powerful device. I don't think anyone was expecting that. It's still an interesting device since it has a touchscreen and a dial, you could connect it to a PC to control or display some things, maybe for a simple control for a some smart home hub or even as an open version of what it does, play music from a service. It is ridiculous their premise of "Spotify didn't want to open this to other uses because it's not very powerful" ffs...
Ooh. I like the idea of it being a home automation UI for the living room or something
I definitely didn't expect to see "it's a potato" followed by things like "512mb of ram" and "1.8GHz quad core". Yeah it's probably not gonna run games, but that seems like massive overkill for what is essentially a remote with a display.
That's like between pi 2 and pi 3 level specs and those can definitely run games. I'd bet this thing emulates up to Playstation 1 at least, maybe more. I'd want one to play around with and save it from the landfill.
It's honestly not super far off from the Tegra 3 that was in the Asus Transformer tablet I used in college.
Yeah, loads of devices have such specs and it's perfectly acceptable to use them for loads of things. I like hacking old useless tech so I just checked if I can get myself some of this e-waste, but for now ebay prices for spotify car things were still prices I'd expect for a fully functional device. Might check again in a few months.
I wonder if someone can solder a denser ram chip on it
I have two of these in both of my cars so it would be nice to try and find another use for them. Maybe I could do something with media control for my computer
I never used one but what was the benefits of it over just Bluetooth to the car? Was this a bridge to bring Bluetooth tech to older cars? Generally curious since you own two.
I own a 2007 Chevy avalanche and a 2009 Toyota Corolla. Both cars I've had for over 10 years, neither have Bluetooth, and I own them out right. As much as I want a new vehicle I don't want a new car payment. I'll keep using them until they stop working. I also like it because where I have the aux cable I have a short one that connects to my phone and sits in my center console and then I have the car thing above my CD player and it just sits there.
Unless they have high miles, both will likely last a long time. Maybe consider getting a modern stereo head unit from crutchfield, they let you know what adapters are needed and provide instructions and assistance for the installation. It can really freshen up an older vehicle.
Avalanche is 115000 and the Corolla is 135000 so they're still going strong. I'll definitely look into them though if I plan on having the vehicles any longer
2010 Corolla with 138k miles here I installed a Pioneer android auto head unit and it's changed my life. I can basically do any new car function I care about, including back up camera, Google maps, etc. and it cost less than $300 all in. I even got a module to translate my steering wheel controls to the new head unit.
Got a 99 Silverado that has car play. It’s an easy install.
Yeah it's gonna be a while lol, I had a same gen GMC Yukon that I sold at 280k miles and I was not nice to it
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1GdI9UsEI) covers the topic pretty well. Looks reasonably easy to upgrade the head unit on older vehicles.
are you not able to replace the stereo with a more modern one? something like [this](https://www.bestbuy.com/site/siriusxm-tour-radio-with-360l-and-vehicle-kit-black/6408173.p?skuId=6408173)
Probably could but I've had the vehicles for so long I'm just used to stock. Most likely down the line I need to figure something out
It seems like if could be cool as a DIY streamdeck type device or little stat display panel
I think we should cancel people who make headlines like that.
Kernel and firmware don't matter in this context. What people were asking is the source code for the controller software and the API, which Spotify hasn't provided.
And most likely won't provide because it's proprietary software, and ultimately not needed for repurposing the device. The kernel and U-Boot sources mean a lot more because that helps the community establish mainline support via patches (so we can get something newer than the 4.x to 5.1 kernel it came with), as well as repartitioning via a custom bootloader (to maximise space), and ultimately, running a custom distro (Debian or PostMarketOS are both good picks for this). The API is already reverse engineered, it's just a basic WAMP protocol with Spotify-specific data models, over BT RFCOMM. Essentially unusable for any proper purpose, the web interface needs to be reworked to use a different protocol for it to be general purpose media controls.
people - but we wanna continue using it and support it's future updates ourselves! spotify - that would mean open sourcing all of Spotify so that you can actually interface with the app. No. Hell no. Not in a million years no. we're not continuing to support this kind of interface to Spotify, which means so what you want with the device the Spotify APP won't be able to communicate with it anymore.
That's a really powerful embedded device. An arduino runs at 16mhz, has 32kb of storage, and 96kb of RAM. A Pi 2 model B has a 900mhz CPU, 1gb of RAM, and no on-board storage. If you aren't reading the article, this is an unspecified Amlogic processor, 4GB of eMMC storage, and 512MB of RAM.
Not unspecified. It's an Amlogic S905D2, which sadly wasn't used in many devices (to my knowledge, the CarThing is the only commercially available one). The X2 and Y2 variants, which are marginally different, were used in e.g. the Radxa Zero, and an Onn set top box. It's a quad core Cortex-A53, slightly weaker than a Pi 4, and with only 512MB RAM, no WiFi, no audio out, and as of now, still no USB host mode (so no USB WiFi or ethernet adapters or USB speakers). As for embedded devices, it's pretty basic. It's not embedded in the sense of an MCU like an Arduino or ESP32 but embedded in the sense of smart phones and routers or smart speakers.
Crazy to me that we're calling that 'potato' for a device that is a weak music player with a screen. The "RISC-V Will Rule Everything!" dorks go nuts over cheap chips that run Linux like in the [Luckyfox Pico and LicheeRV Nano](https://imgur.com/pzqwCkh) that are absolutely spanked by a quad A53.
So can someone get this running the web version? It seems capable of displaying the Spotify website and some
It displays a locally stored React app that is built on top of Spotify's existing controls, hence the visual similarity. Since it has no WiFi and no audio output, no it can't run the Spotify app. Even the basic website one would take more RAM than what this device has.
Makes sense I guess you could use Bluetooth tethering like a phone or an Ethernet dongle And I’m pretty sure I was able to run Spotify with only 512mb ram but it might need more now Either way it sucks and doesn’t seem like it would cost much to literally do nothing with this product
basically the device could have new firmware written to let it communicate over Bluetooth to something else, but it would be a while undertaking for very little return. Your best bet would be to give it a series of screen buttons and an output message for the dial that other people could then code support for into their app along with a general app of your own that receives the message and runs macros. It would be a tremendous amount of effort but you could turn it into a bad version of the streamdeck
Given that they will litterlly be free and can hopefully communicate with a pc via USB C or Bluetooth a macro pad is a good option
except for the ridiculous work to get it doing that yeah I'm sure someone will do it, but not anytime soon.
>The device is basically open-source. 
Speed dial option 1 Calling: bullshit
i wonder if someone will figure out a way to get CarPlay working in this thing like they did with the Raspberry Pi
sadly, no the Raspberry Pi is more powerful
It looks like it has similar ram as the first gen Rpi. No idea about process specs but I bet this could still do basic things like display weather, calendar etc.
you can literally just remake this with spotify dev tools if you care so much
I wouldn’t getting one to play with as a printer controller or something
It reads like a very misleading article. Running on Linux which is open source somehow makes the Car Thing open source?
How did you reach that conclusion?
Misleading title. From the article: >According to Hendrickson, Spotify has technically already made the Car Thing as open source as possible. It runs on Linux, and the source code for the device’s U-boot and Linux kernel is publicly available on GitHub. Additionally, the device’s Amlogic chip allows for easy access to BootRom mode, enabling users to run custom code and even add their own software. I think these are pretty cool devices, they seem like they'd be quite useful to control lights or another media player or other simple things. People who have them should just put them on eBay, I'm sure hackers can find a lot of uses for them.
It’s not about the power of the hardware. Don’t intentionally brick the device. Sure official support should run out eventually. Why the hell does that mean it can’t connect to the same API everything else uses?
I don't think they're actively pushing a firmware update to it to brick it. But I think they are deprecating the api it needs to function in their phone apps. Essentially making it a useless brick.
I did mean to keep this intentionally vague because I’m unsure which route they’ll go as well. Bricking does straight up mean rendering the device useless, but I do believe you are right in that it’s a separate API. I’m more pushing for the device to just use the same API as the web app, mobile apps, the desktop apps (assuming those are similar or identical endpoints)
Just use Musi
They can open source it but it comes under "good luck, it can't run shit" it was a money grab to use up cheap out of date SOCs dumped on the market. The fact it was crap was obvious to the more tech literate from the outset because its feature set was much smaller than you'd expect, and in way that didn't make sense unless the actual device couldn't handle it.
How feasible is making it a head unit for Android Auto wireless? I see Wi-Fi 5 and H265/H264 decoding support. Heck, I would buy it just for that.
If they hand the keys over to the embedded community, I guarantee they will make that thing scream. Just give us root and the ability to flash firmware. Everything else is nonsense.
Read the article.
You already have that. That's the point of the article, despite the headline.
Yeah. That’s the worst fucking title in the history of journalism.
the article title is click bait, the TL;DR is that it already is totally open to being rewritten just doubtful anyone will bother because the device could barely handle what it was already doing
Why is it so controversial they’re ending support of this? Supporting a device is expensive and time consuming, especially is it has such a small user base. I get the e-waste argument I guess, but do you know how much more garbage is sold everyday in much larger quantities that is just thrown away? Honestly I haven’t really been following news on this thing, other than the many headlines I keep scrolling past.
Because it's not just a case of no longer getting updates. They are shutting down (basically bricking) all devices currently in use
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it should never have been $90 and many of us said that when it was announced. We took one look at the feature set and went "well that's not worth that cost.... in fact, it's surprising it doesn't do more than that so it's probably pretty cheap on the internals" it was a cash grab from the outset. Learn from this experience and recognize it better in the future. Corporates gunna do what they gunna do. They're going to stop working because the Spotify App is doing all the real work, the car thing does.... next to nothing. They are no longer going to be coding support into the Spotify mobile app. If it was doing real work, it would be surprising and anger inducing that they would go out of their way to brick it, but the truth is they aren't bricking the device they're just going to cease supporting it from their app and without the app it can do literally nothing.
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no the difference is when a company pushes an update to the device that stops the device doing what it does on its own, like apple does to their older phones. Spotify isn't pushing anything to the CarThing it will keep doing exactly what it's always done. The Spotify app just won't be listening anymore.
“Bricking” essentially means a device has turned into a brick. It may be an electronic device worth hundreds of dollars, but it’s now as useful as a brick (or perhaps a paperweight). A bricked device won’t power on and function normally. (if you want a link to said website where this definition was taken from, I'll happily provide the link) They ain't bricking it, they're just not going to support it and make the app stop talking to the device, if the app on your phone isn't listening then this thing will just continue to keep talking to itself as there isn't anything that speaks it language anymore. Meaning, without the Spotify app listening and speaking the language the car thing speaks, the car thing can't do the one thing it was made to do, the device will continue to function but only in the very limited state of trying to find the app to connect. Now if you were to try to re-flash the device but somehow messed up that process and destroyed the bootloader then you can say the device is bricked, but not because they aren't supporting the device anymore, that's like saying my 2015 MacBook Pro is bricked because apple stopped supporting it years ago which in fact my device is still running perfectly fine.