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Hacking community saves Spotify Car Thing from becoming e-waste

There are a good number of DIY mods already available for Spotify Car Thing (Image source: lmore377 on GitHub)
There are a good number of DIY mods already available for Spotify Car Thing (Image source: lmore377 on GitHub)
Spotify Car Thing will officially reach the end of support and stop being functional after December 9th, 2024. Even though the company has started to offer refunds, there's a requirement that many of the users may not meet. The hacking community has devised solutions to use the device for something else for those who don't or can't take the refund.

The Spotify Car Thing is a nifty little gadget that makes streaming music hassle-free in vehicles that don't have a modern infotainment system. But it didn't get to live a long life. The streaming giant made it available to the public in February 2022, and it will officially be going out of service on December 9th, 2024.

Spotify didn't initially plan to offer refunds, but to avoid possible lawsuits, the company has started to offer refunds. But there's one condition that users must meet to be eligible for a refund. They need to show proof of purchase, which many users may not have. A good number of users are also not happy with the idea that the Car Thing will officially be a brick after December 9th of this year.

The good news is that the hacking community has stepped up on this matter and found ways to keep Car Thing functional even after Spotify ends the support. After Spotify announced the end-of-life date for the gadget, some users asked the company to open-source it.

But it turns out that Spotify already made the source code for the Linux kernel, bootloader, software updater, and Bluetooth stack public. With all this, the hacking community could flash custom firmware and make other changes to the Car Thing.

However, as a DIY hardware hacker named Josh Hendrickson on YouTube pointed out, there's not much that you can do with the Car Thing. After all, it has only 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB of storage, and an Amlogic S905D2 ARM processor. There's no WiFi, which further limits the device from being useful for complex applications.

Even so, the hacking community came up with a custom web app called Superbird, which also happens to be the codename of Spotify Car Thing. It lets you use the device as a remote control for other services and apps.

You can also install Marco Deck, which makes the Car Thing a touchscreen controller for launching apps and executing functions on a connected device. Alternatively, you can boot a lightweight Linux distro based on Debian 13 and run an open-source web browser on it. However, this requires a host device such as a Raspberry Pi (Pi 5 available on Amazon).

These are just some of the examples that the hacking community has come up with. There will likely be more mods that could make the Car Thing truly useful.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2024 06 > Hacking community saves Spotify Car Thing from becoming an e-waste
Abid Ahsan Shanto, 2024-06- 8 (Update: 2024-08-15)