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Open source all the (car) things!

Spotify’s Car Thing, due for bricking, is getting an open source second life

It's more of a desktop thing now, but it has picked up some new features.

Kevin Purdy – | 38
Spotify Car Thing, with Nocturne running on it, on a desktop.
Spotify's Car Thing, but now it's a desk thing, and running Nocturne. Credit: Dammit Jeff
Spotify's Car Thing, but now it's a desk thing, and running Nocturne. Credit: Dammit Jeff
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Spotify has lost all enthusiasm for the little music devices it sold for just half a year. Firmware hackers, as usually happens, have a lot more interest and have stepped in to save, and upgrade, a potentially useful gadget.

Spotify's idea a couple years ago was a car-focused device for those who lacked Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, or built-in Spotify support in their vehicles, or just wanted a dedicated Spotify screen. The Car Thing was a $100 doodad with a 4-inch touchscreen and knob that attached to the dashboard (or into a CD slot drive). All it could do was play Spotify, and only if you were a paying member, but that could be an upgrade for owners of older cars, or people who wanted a little desktop music controller.

But less than half a year after it fully released its first hardware device, Spotify gave up on the Car Thing due to "several factors, including product demand and supply chain issues." A Spotify rep told Ars that the Car Thing was meant "to learn more about how people listen in the car," and now it was "time to say goodbye to the devices entirely." Spotify indicated it would offer refunds, though not guaranteed, and moved forward with plans to brick the device in December 2024.

It was always open source, just not publicly

Enter Dammit Jeff, a YouTuber who dove into his device and shows off some alternative software ideas for it (as we first saw on Adafruit's blog). He even likes the little thing, noting that its wheel feels great, and that the four buttons on the top—originally meant for favorite playlists—present a lot of possibilities.

Dammit Jeff reviews some of the ways you can repurpose a Spotify Car Thing.

Spotify had previously posted the code for its uboot and kernel to GitHub, under the very unassuming name "spsgsb" and with no announcement (as discovered by Josh Hendrickson). Jeff has one idea why the streaming giant might not have made much noise about it: "The truth is, this thing isn't really great at running anything." It has half a gigabyte of memory, 4GB of internal storage, and a "really crappy processor" (Amlogic S905D2 SoC) and is mostly good for controlling music.

How do you get in? The SoC has a built-in USB "burning mode," allowing for a connected computer, running the right toolkit, to open up root access and overwrite its firmware. Jeff has quite a few issues getting connected (check his video description for some guidance), but it's "drag and drop" once you're in.

Jeff runs through a few of the most popular options for a repurposed Car Thing:

  • DeskThing, which largely makes Spotify desk-friendly, but adds a tiny app store for weather (including Jeff's own WeatherWave), clocks, and alternate music controls
  • GlanceThing, which keeps the music controls but also provides some Stream-Deck-like app-launching shortcuts for your main computer.
  • Nocturne, currently invite-only, is a wholly redesigned Spotify interface that restores all its Spotify functionality.

There is, as Jeff notes, no easy way to get the Car Thing running in a car once again, at least for now. Not unless you can and do want to hook up a Raspberry Pi in that car, too. Spotify has not opened up the software that lets the Car Thing connect to your phone, so all of these desktop-focused firmwares rely on some kind of companion app running on other hardware.

Photo of Kevin Purdy
Kevin Purdy Senior Technology Reporter
Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch.
38 Comments
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Canterrain
Canterrain
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.
Canterrain
Canterrain
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.
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 :

We've hired entry-level reviewers before (relatively recently, in fact). The opportunities do come up. This particular opportunity, though, is not an entry level-position.

And, as Abulia noted, the majority of people who break into writing on the product review side start by freelancing at a number of publications rather than jumping immediately into a W2 job. It's what I did!

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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