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Spotify Car Thing Hacking

Warning

I've tested this on Windows. Guides for Linux and Mac are copied from other references, and untested. Use at your own risk.

The instructions for Windows are what worked for me. I'll also assume syntax for Windows, and use backslashes and Windows syntax for the commands. Adjust accordingly if you're not using Windows.

Download all the things

  • Zadig - v2.9 at the time of writing
  • Thing Labs firmware from Thingify.Tools - v8.9.2 at the time of writing
  • thinglabsoss/superbird-tool on GitHub - Click the green dropdown and download the ZIP archive of the code
  • Git

  • Python - I'm using 3.12. Officially, Superbird docs at the time of writing say it's tested with 3.10 and 3.11, but 3.12 worked for me.

  • Extract Superbird to anywhere you like. I'll assume you've called it superbird

  • Extract your Thing Labs firmware to a folder inside of superbird. I'll assume you've called this thinglabs. This folder should have all the data files directly inside of it

Install drivers with Zadig

Hold down buttons 1 and 4, and plug in the Car Thing

Note

If this is done correctly, your PC should see it, but the screen will remain blank, and it won't try to boot with the regular boot process.

If you did this correctly, Zadig should show you a GX-CHIP device. The driver you want is generally libusb. On Windows specifically, you want libusbK instead. Install the relevant driver.

Flashing custom firmware

Before you can do anything with the Car Thing, modified firmware has to be flashed. Without this, things like ADB and such aren't exposed.

At this point, I'll assume a few things:

  • The correct libusb or libusbK driver installed
  • Superbird is extracted to the superbird directory
  • The Thing Labs firmware is extracted to the superbird\thinglabs directory

Open a terminal, and get to superbird wherever it is that you put it.

  1. Unplug the Car Thing if it's still plugged in
  2. In the same way as before, hold buttons 1 and 4
  3. While still holding those buttons, plug it in

Prerequisites - Python dependencies

Windows

python -m pip install git+https://github.com/superna9999/pyamlboot
python -m pip install pyusb
python -m pip install libusb

Linux

Warning

I haven't tested this. This is copied and pasted from Superbird docs.

On Linux, you just need to install pyamlboot. However, root is needed on Linux, unless you fiddle with udev rules, which means the pip package also needs to be installed as root

sudo python3 -m pip install git+https://github.com/superna9999/pyamlboot

macOS

Warning

I haven't tested this. This is copied and pasted from Superbird docs.

On macOS, you must install python3 and libusb from homebrew, and execute using that version of python

brew install python3 libusb
/opt/homebrew/bin/python3 -m pip install git+https://github.com/superna9999/pyamlboot

Actually flashing firmware

If this all worked correctly, running 

superbird_tool.py --find_device

Should show you something like Found device booted in USB Mode.

To enter burn mode, run 

superbird_tool.py --burn_mode

Once you're successfully in burn mode, it's time to flash the modded firmware.

superbird_tool.py --restore_device ./thinglabs

This will take a few minutes. Once complete, if all goes well, you should have modded firmware.

Note

If this fails for you on Windows with something like KeyError or something about amlmmc env, it's probably because you installed the libusb driver instead of libusbK. If this is the case, unplug the Car Thing, plug it back in while holding buttons 1 and 4 to boot in USB mode, go back into Zadig if this is the case, and reinstall the libusbK driver instead.

Unplug your Car Thing and plug it back in to drop out of USB mode, and boot normally. If everything worked, you should see the "ThingLabs" logo on boot.

Doing stuff with the Car Thing

The 2 things I've tested are DeskThing and GlanceThing. I prefer the layout of DeskThing in general, as it's closer to stock Spotify for media stuff, but personally, it seems to lag behind for me on media updates. I find GlanceThing to be smoother of a process. I'll outline the process I followed for both.

DeskThing

Download DeskThing Server from ThingLabs and install it. When you're done, run it.

  1. Under the "Clients" tab, you should see your Car Thing in the list. If it fails to connect, try clicking the "configure" button to connect it.
  2. On the "Downloads" tab, find and download the "Spotify" app.
    1. Once it finishes, click "Initialize App"
  3. Go to the "Apps" tab, and click the bubble that says "Requesting Data", and follow the directions to go to the Spotify dev dashboard and create your app.
    1. Copy and paste in the client ID and client secret when DeskThing asks, which is how this will connect to Spotify's API.
    2. Set the endpoint url to http://localhost:8888/callback/spotify
    3. Save, and you should see a browser window pop up with a success message. You can close that Window.

GlanceThing

Download the latest version of GlanceThing from the releases page on GitHub and install it.

GlanceThing will guide you through the install process, and is a lot easier to install than DeskThing.

Rather than use the API, GlanceThing currently uses a token from open.spotify.com, which it guides you through obtaining and providing, so that it can pull the now playing data.

Note

GlanceThing runs in memory, and doesn't perma install like DeskThing does. Instead of opening GlanceThing on your computer every time you plug in the Car Thing, and reinstalling, you can click on the cog in the top right of GlanceThing, and toggle the auto install option. This will auto reinstall GlanceThing every time it sees a Car Thing that doesn't have it running, so you don't have to load it into memory every boot.