How Spotify Car Thing Turned into an Open Source E-waste Nightmare

if you're into Tech news you've heard the buzzz about spotify's car thing launched in 2021 this $90 device was meant to control Spotify in your car but with Spotify now built into most cars the car thing flopped Spotify slashed the price discontinued it and now plans to Brick it by December telling users just toss it in the trash a lot of journalists and YouTubers are complaining that Spotify refuses to open source the device so it can't be hacked but here's the thing that's not true before we get started on the truth behind car thing open sourcing and hacking it we should briefly cover its history Spotify first launched it in early 2021 on an invite only basis you'd request one and if chosen Spotify sent it to you free of charge assuming you subscribed to Spotify Premium of course it was already a curiosity even then because a lot of cars had Android auto and carplay or just Spotify built in which is probably why when Spotify fully released it in 2022 for $90 the car thing flopped the company tried slashing the price but ultimately discontinued sales and stopped making the device all of that's fine because for anyone that bought one it still works but now Spotify says it will brick the devices entirely in December and you should probably just responsibly throw yours away that's terrible but considering it's just a single use purpose device why does anyone care because honestly it's kind of nice it's a handy little piece of Hardware with a few buttons a screen and even a clicky turn dial and it can control music played on your phone and that doesn't even have to be Spotify it can control YouTube music as you're seeing now Apple music or basically anything you want over Bluetooth which makes the Spotify Premium requirement a little bit of a kick in the teeth but think about it that sounds like a bunch of other handy little devices that exist like macro pads and what if you could just turn it into one and not throw it away according to several sites and YouTubers that's just not possible because Spotify refuses to open source the thing but that's not actually true or the problem Spotify already open source the car thing no really it did it runs on Linux which is an open source OS and Spotify posted the uboot and Linux kernel source code for this device to GitHub I don't know why Spotify won't just tell journalists that when they ask for comment about open sourcing it on top of that since it uses one of am logic's chips it has an easy access boot rombo just press and hold button one and four while plugging it in from there you can use ADB and other commands to run custom code dump the source code or even add your own people already have basically the car thing is as open source source as it possibly can be the main thing holding it back is incredibly weak Hardware it runs a weak am logic processor 4 GB of storage and 512 megabytes yet yes megabytes of ram it's two we to run Android or any heavy Linux OS and I know personally because for the last week I've been trying to hack the car things to do other things so far I've removed the Spotify Premium requirement although that won't help when Spotify breaks the things loaded a custom Debian Linux firmware that can do little more than load a single web page and that's about it and even then you need a Raspberry Pi to do some of that every other attempt to connect it to a service like macro deck has ended in failure and it's been a lesson in frustration because the car thing is so underpowered even loading custom firmware doesn't work all that well every attempt takes at least 15 minutes because it can't handle data transfers any faster and even then every second the third attempt ends in Failure it loses connection and stops and don't even think about connecting through a USB hub that will always completely fail we can actually compare just how low powerered the car thing is to another piece of Hardware out in the market the Rasberry Pi 02w that's another low powered device you can buy pretty cheap and at first glance the car thing almost comes out ahead they both run a quad core 64-bit arm cortex a53 CPU but the pi is clocked at just 1 GHz while the car things is clocked in at 1.89 6 GHz and they both have the same measly 512 megab of ram but that's the end of the good news for the car thing it has just 4 GB of storage while the pi has a Micro SD card slot which means you can go much bigger on storage and the Raspberry Pi has a few other important specs the car thing doesn't like Wi-Fi a mini HDMI port and an unpopulated 40 pin header footprint basically anything the car thing can do the pi 02w can do better and when we look at that device no one is trying to turn one into a super useful full-fledged computer the 02w is dubbed as perfect for iot projects like powering a Bluetooth speaker or a security camera which again is possible thanks to having Wi-Fi you could even potentially use the pi02 to give car thing access to the internet when you really think about it the the real Advantage here to the car thing is it already has a working touchscreen buttons and a turn dial something you'd have to source for the pi 02w but when I think about it nothing is stopping anyone from turning the pi zero into a car thing that Spotify can't kill and if that sounds like something you'd like to see let me know down in the comments below and I'll try it that's the problem Spotify built a very Niche case piece of Hardware it's a tiny touchcreen that can do one thing alone play a web app that serves as a media player anything more is too much for it to handle some modders had it working briefly with macro deck an open-source macroad software but that failed when macro deck added more features and moved to a newer chromium version than the car thing can handle all of this is just terrible there's honestly no good reason for Spotify to Brick the car thing it's just Bluetooth connecting to your phone and displaying a media player it pulls artwork and details from the Spotify app and that's my guess on why they're bricking it so they don't have to maintain the apps compatibility with the device they no longer sell but it feels like a stark reminder of a modern truth you don't own anything you buy anymore not even your Hardware not when a company can just decide to Brick it a few years after selling it to you I hope anyone working on making the car thing into a viable thing keeps trying and finds useful things to do with these devices despite the challenges but I'm not holding out too much hope it's really difficult even if they did most people aren't going to know how or have the patience to root this in loow custom firmware it'll probably still end up in the trash or if you want send yours to me and I'll do something interesting with them even if it's an e-w display in my videos this is the kind of situation that Hardware companies even ones new to the scene should try to avoid thanks for watching and don't forget get to subscribe for more Tech news and reviews stick around at the Ender Channel we have a lot of great things coming until next time bye

Channel: Anoraker

Views: 145,463

Keywords: car thing, you will own nothing, spotify car thing, car thing spotify, car thing hack, car thing spotify review, spotify car thing hack, spotify car thing jailbreak, spotify car thing pc, car thing review, right to repair, diy, anoraker, josh hendrickson

Id: y-CnNYY1Rzk

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2024