Developers keep Spotify Car Thing alive with custom firmware

In context: When Spotify announced successful May that its beloved Car Thing would beryllium discontinued connected December 9, galore users were understandably upset. To make matters worse, Spotify fundamentally stated that nan instrumentality would beryllium rendered useless, asking customers to "safely dispose" of their units. Following important backlash, nan institution did statesman offering refunds, though it ne'er wavered from its original stance.

However, a mates of developers person made it clear that they aren't fresh to fto nan Car Thing spell conscionable yet, pinch caller civilization package called Nocturne. This package is designed to respire caller life into nan device, moreover aft Spotify pulls nan plug.

it moreover useful successful a car, owning up to nan hardware's unorthodox name: pic.twitter.com/5bkMq2fIMe

Car Thing has ever been unfastened to flashing caller package acknowledgment to its Amlogic chip, allowing users to tally civilization codification and load their ain programs. In June of this year, YouTuber Josh Hendrickson discovered that Spotify had made nan device's package open-source connected GitHub – specifically its U-Boot and Linux kernel. The institution ne'er officially announced this, which is why it took a while for group to find out.

Hendrickson speculated that nan logic down Spotify's soundlessness was nan Car Thing's hardware limitations. With its anemic Amlogic processor, conscionable 4GB of eMMC storage, and a specified 512MB of RAM, nan instrumentality is excessively underpowered to tally thing much demanding than nan web-based media subordinate it was intended to support.

That did not extremity Brandon Saldan and different developer going by nan sanction "shadow" from moving tirelessly connected nan Nocturne project. With this software, users tin search, browse, and interact pinch Spotify's monolithic euphony library, playlists, and power stations – each straight from nan Car Thing. In fact, Nocturne is nan only firmware that afloat restores nan device's original capabilities.

As Saldan explained successful an X thread, "E-waste is bad, which is why we decided to springiness your aged Car Thing a caller life pinch afloat Spotify functionality."

However, there's a important drawback if you want to usage Nocturne successful your car: The package requires a big instrumentality to supply web capabilities. The developers stated successful a Reddit station that they purpose to eliminate this request successful nan future. For now, a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, which tin fulfill this role, is comparatively affordable astatine astir $20.

A caller hands-on video review of Nocturne by Dammit Jeff gives america a sensation of nan software's awesome features. Despite being an early build, he praises nan UI for its gorgeous gradient artistic and thoughtful details, specified arsenic lyrics integration and color-shifting medium creation visualization.

There is 1 issue, nevertheless – a important lag successful nan UI. This lag occurs because nan developers person not yet figured retired really to alteration GPU acceleration, but they are actively moving to reside it.

If you're eager to effort retired Nocturne, nan squad has group up a Google Form to nonstop retired invites erstwhile nan package is released.

In nan arena you are emotion adventurous and want to flash Nocturne correct distant – aliases if you wish to lend to nan task – you tin cheque retired nan project's GitHub, wherever nan developers person elaborate nan flashing process. If you're worried astir bricking your Car Thing up of its foretold demise pinch these hacks, Dammit Jeff assures america that it's astir impossible, arsenic you tin ever reflash nan original firmware.