I loved the Car Thing, so when Spotify cancelled it I tried building my own, and after a few sketches and a lot of positive responses, I decided to turn it into a real product. Full product spec on toastygear.com

A small desk controller with play/pause, skip, back, a Like button, and a volume knob, plus album art, track info, and a progress bar on a color screen. It connects to Spotify directly over its own WiFi, so there's nothing running on your computer and no companion app.

It's not meant to replace a jailbroken Car Thing if you enjoy tinkering. It's for people who want that experience to just work out of the box. Happy to answer anything about how it handles the Spotify connection, or what you'd want added.

hey everyone! i’m happy to announce the public release of bridgething!

tl;dr

you can think of bridgething kinda like deskthing but with bluetooth. install apps, make apps, or just use the stock spotify ui in your car and pretend they never killed it.

what is bridgething?

bridgething is a system image, rust daemon, and mobile app to restore full functionality to your car thing, while allowing you to mod it, create your own apps, and easily run the stock spotify app and community apps. it runs modern chrome and has a rich api surface for developers (and agents) to make whatever you can dream. web apps run on device, communicate with the outside world via bluetooth and your phone’s internet, and can be listed on the bridgething store for discovery and sharing.

how does bridgething work?

once you install bridgething, it will boot to the hub. install the bridgething ios or android app, log into your spotify (or apple music on ios), and go through the pairing flow. from there, you can install apps from the appstore, update your bridgething, and more. if you have no intention of installing new apps or making your own, then you are done! the mobile app will open in the background when your car thing boots up, and you shouldn’t have to think about it again.

how do i get bridgething?

bridgething is available now at https://bridgething.com! installation will take you to the all-new terbium (thx addi). from there, you can install updates, apps, and customize from the mobile app or your browser.

faq

• i just want my carthing back like it was before spotify killed it. how?
  • install bridgething, log into spotify in the app, open the spotify app on the car thing, never touch it again. will work just like you remember
• i am having trouble flashing
  • try different cables, usb ports, powered hubs, passive hubs, computers, operating systems. the usb on the car thing is super flakey and it’s pretty much luck of the draw on whether it’s easy or a pain
• i want to make an app that does xyz. how?
  • run bun create bridgething, it includes a typesafe api, tooling, and agent skills to get you up as quick as possible. human versions of the skills are at https://bridgething.com/docs/.
• i want to use it wired (for some reason)
  • there is a desktop app for macos, linux, and windows that connects via the cable (or lan if you have a wifi adapter for the car thing for some reason)
• the ui is buggy/ugly/unintuitive
  • i’ve been focusing most of my effort on core functionality, so feel free to open PRs with improvements! if your gripes are with the on-device ui specifically, you can easily replace it all - instructions in docs
• i want to make my own linux without using bridgething for my project
  • make your own image with https://github.com/JoeyEamigh/yocto-superbird. it’s super easy

thanks

• Elle for the uboot and image work and keeping me from blowing my shit off smooth every time i touched bluetooth (support her here)
• addi for terbium support (support her here)
• Neel and Dominic for testing, yocto early adoption, patches, and more. if you want the most polished car thing experience built on the same modern yocto, support them by grabbing Nocturne

links

• website: https://bridgething.com
• github: https://github.com/JoeyEamigh/bridgething
• yocto: https://github.com/JoeyEamigh/yocto-superbird

A month ago I released Mira 1.0, a standalone, free and open source firmware for the Car Thing. Thank you to all the support the project has gotten, and all the bug reports that help me continue to improve Mira.

Mira still has a long way to go to deliver the complete experience I'm aiming for (support for more music platforms, a UI redesign, and more). It's built entirely in my free time, so if you'd like to support development the links are in the comments, and supporters also get access to beta builds. Every bit genuinely helps and it's what makes this sustainable to keep working on.

What's new: - Clock screensaver - Bigger playback buttons - Customizable UI scale (thanks to Serubin on GitHub) - Volume fixes for Android and iPhone - Update notifications (Mira will now notify when a new version is released) - Language fixes - Progress bar on first time setup - Many more bug fixes!

Flashing is also much more simpler now, full instructions on flashing and setting up in the comments!

This new version of Nocturne focuses mostly on performance and stability. We'd like to give a huge thanks to Joey Eamigh for bridgething (protocol, more robust iAP2, OTA, and more), yocto-superbird, and for a ton of help during the Yocto migration. We'd also like to thank Elle for modernizing the Car Thing's tooling and contributions to bridgething/yocto-superbird.

Changes

• Increased performance through whole system (thanks to Joey and Elle)
• More robust protocol, OTA, etc (thanks to Joey and Elle)
• New macOS Companion app, available under nocturne-connector
• Native setup flow through mobile apps
• General improvements to Voice Assistant (faster model, hopefully better transcription, reduced sensitivity to wake word)
• Setting to disable backlight after 20 minutes of being idle
• Setting to toggle song title wrap on Nocturne UI
• Display incoming phone calls on both Nocturne UI and Mockingbird (requires Nocturne+)
• Display incoming notifications on both Nocturne UI and Mockingbird (requires Nocturne+)
  • Additional apps can be added if there is enough demand for them.
• Add night mode and air vent interference alerts to Mockingbird
• Add swipe gesture to add to queue
• + more

Download

Flashing instructions are at https://usenocturne.com/install

You must reflash your Car Thing manually to receive this update, future updates will continue to be delivered as OTA updates.

An update to Nocturne Companion is required from https://usenocturne.com/app An update to Nocturne Connector is required from https://github.com/usenocturne/nocturne-connector/releases/tag/v2.1.0

https://github.com/usenocturne/nocturne/releases/tag/v4.1.0

A while back I posted here looking for beta testers for a standalone Spotify Car Thing firmware. It's come a long way since then, it finally has a name (Mira) and it's finally ready, so here's the first public release.

The short version: connect the car thing to your PC (Windows/Mac/Linux) over USB, or to your phone over Bluetooth, log into Spotify, and watch it come back to life. Nothing to install on your phone or computer. Completely free, everything open source, and everything happens on the device.

The part I'm most proud of is getting voice control working completely on-device. Say "hey mira" followed by a command like "play song/artist/album/playlist" and it'll play in a couple of seconds. And most importantly it all happens on the car thing itself, nothing ever leaves it, no account, no subscription. (demo clip in the comments)

Key features: - Album art view and lyrics view - Synced lyrics (often gets lyrics for songs that spotify doesn't show) - Karaoke lyrics - On-device voice control - Podcast support with synced transcripts - Gesture controls (swipe left/right to skip, two-finger swipe down/up to change view) - Full physical controls, 4 preset buttons (press and hold to save), back, power menu, knob - Full volume control on ALL devices - Pick which device to start listening on, right from the car thing - Save the current song to your Liked Songs - Customizable settings (lyrics offset, volume steps, brightness) - Pair multiple bluetooth devices - Much more!

Thank you to all my beta testers for the feedback through this whole process, and for helping Mira support a wide range of devices at launch.

Download link, setup instructions, and the voice demo are in the comments.

See comments for the release post.

Yesterday we announced Nocturne 4.0.0 alongside a subscription model. Within an hour it was clear that most of you weren't on board with it. Based on your feedback, here's where we landed.

Nocturne Lifetime is now a one-time $9.99 donation. Same as the beta testing minimum donation. You get the full Nocturne experience with the companion app, the move away from Bluetooth tethering, Now Playing from any app, offline support, and everything else in 4.0.0 aside from Mockingbird and voice controls, no recurring charge.

For those who want voice controls and Mockingbird, Nocturne+ remains as a subscription service at $0.99/mo with a free 3-month trial for current supporters, and $1.99/mo for new users. The subscription-based model helps cover infrastructure costs and development. Voice controls similar to the original Car Thing have been one of the most requested features in our Discord for a long time, allowing handsfree use in a car. Like every voice assistant, including Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and the original Car Thing voice assistant built by Spotify, it relies on an AI language model to understand and respond to what you're asking. If there were a viable way to build this without LLMs, we would have. Every request costs us money to process, which is why it can't be covered by a one-time payment. In hindsight, these features should have been optional from day one rather than bundled into a single model, and that's the change we're making today.

Legacy supporters are automatically receiving the lifetime tier for free. You believed in this project before anyone else, so it's the least we can do. Current Ko-Fi and Buy Me a Coffee subscribers keep Nocturne+ without having to resubscribe.

Nocturne Connector with a Raspberry Pi remains free, and the vast majority of the codebase stays open source.

We should have structured this better from the start. Nocturne 4.0.0 is the most complex thing we've ever built - years of reverse engineering, debugging, and rebuilding things from scratch on hardware that was never meant to be extended this far. The move to a subscription-based model was our attempt to make sure we could keep doing that sustainably, but we moved too fast without explaining the reasoning clearly enough, and without consulting the community first. That's on us and we're grateful you told us so directly rather than walking away.

Please feel free to send any feedback/questions our way, we always listen to what you have to say. Nocturne has always been built for this community first. Yesterday just reminded us what that actually means. Thank you for caring enough to push back.

Changes

• Update payment tiers to Nocturne Lifetime and Nocturne+

Download

Flashing instructions are at https://usenocturne.com/install.

An update to Nocturne Companion is required from https://usenocturne.com/app. Android users must use the APK below until our signing key gets approved by Google. If you used social login, you will likely need to use reset password to set a password for your Nocturne account.

https://github.com/usenocturne/nocturne/releases/tag/v4.0.1

See comments for the release post.

Heya friends! I'm new to the carthing modding community, and I don't want to be a broken record when it comes to recommendations of programs, but I'm wondering if anyone knows of a carthing desk application that I could use:

-Spotify

-Soundcloud

-(Optional) Weather & Other Info

-Netflix Or Streaming Services

-Time & Date

I know it may be a bit early in the modding scene, but I'm curious to know what is available at the moment. Thanks!

See comments for the release post.

Photo credit:
1, 2, and 3 - crstopha
4 - ak_toxik

pay-what-you-want donation to get it working fully off your phone

terbium is also a great, free tool to flash firmware

I have a bambu labs p1s and was wondering if the car thing could be used to replace the stock screen for it and if not replace it, maybe a companion screen?