🏎️ Spotify Car Thing — Nocturne OS & Custom Apps Toolkit

An end-to-end custom operating environment and application suite for the Spotify Car Thing (Amlogic S905D2 / Superbird).

When Spotify discontinued the Car Thing in late 2024 and scheduled the bricking of all active devices, this project was engineered to repurpose the hardware into a standalone, offline handheld and desk companion: a rotary-dial game console, offline e-reader, microphone voice memo recorder, ambient night lamp, and even an x86 virtual PC running KolibriOS.

Important

🔌 100% On-Device Execution — No PC, Server, or Internet Required!

Unlike many other Car Thing projects that require a host PC or server streaming content in the background, every app, game, tool, and emulator in this repository runs 100% locally on the Car Thing hardware itself:

• No Host PC Running in the Background: Once installed via the 1-Click Installer, you can unplug the Car Thing from your computer and power it from any standard USB port, car charger, or power bank.
• Zero Servers or Cloud APIs: All 23 games, tools, audio recordings, and the KolibriOS x86 virtual machine execute directly on the Car Thing's internal quad-core Amlogic processor and eMMC storage.
• 100% Offline: Fully operational with zero internet or Wi-Fi connection. Take it on road trips, off-grid, or keep it on your desk as an independent gadget.

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📸 Screenshots (Captured Directly on Real Hardware)

🎮 Custom Rotary Dial & Coverflow Launcher

The custom Chromium kiosk shell runs native 800×480 with GPU hardware acceleration. The rotary dial scrolls through a 3D animated card deck with a 70ms hardware debounce lock.

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🕹️ Dedicated Game Boy (GB) Player (Tools Tab)

• Authentic DMG Emulation: Built with the high-performance, cycle-accurate GameBoyCore engine. Zero input latency, locked at 60 FPS, with authentic monochrome/green tint palettes.
• Hardware-Integrated Controls:
  • 🔘 Knob Push (Click Dial): Triggers Button A (Jump, Attack, Confirm) with a green HUD status badge.
  • 🔴 Dedicated Thumb Button: Large 82px Coral Red Button B (Cancel, Run, Inhale) comfortably positioned for your right thumb.
  • Physical Back Button: Also wired directly to Button B.
  • Tactile D-Pad & Top Buttons: Full capacitive 4-way cross pad on the left, with Top Button 2 for SELECT and Top Button 3 for START.
• Pre-Loaded Classics:
  • 🗡️ The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening: Classic top-down dungeon crawler and island adventure.
  • ⭐ Kirby's Dream Land 2: Iconic platforming with Rick, Kine, and Coo.
  • 🔴 Pokémon Red Version: The definitive original monster-catching RPG.
  • ➕ Custom ROMs: Tap 📂 ROM to load any .gb or .gbc file directly from device storage.

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📖 Dial-Controlled E-Reader & 🎙️ Voice Memo Recorder

• E-Reader: Uses the physical rotary dial to flip book pages. Reconstructs reflowable EPUBs into clean paginated views.
• Voice Recorder: Taps directly into the Car Thing’s onboard microphone array to record voice notes saved locally to flash storage.

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🖥️ KolibriOS x86 PC Emulation & 📝 Touch Notes

• KolibriOS: Boots a real 32-bit x86 operating system in a 32MB virtual machine (libv86.js + v86.wasm) with a custom smooth touch trackpad, Start Menu button, and on-screen keyboard.
• Notes: Full on-screen touch keyboard designed for the 800×480 screen with persistent IndexedDB storage.

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🌐 100% Offline On-Device Neural Translator (Marian NMT / Bergamot WASM)

• Edge AI on ARM: Translates full sentences on-device using quantized Marian NMT neural networks compiled to WebAssembly. Zero companion PC, zero cloud APIs, zero internet.
• Instant Touch Typing & Debounce Guard: Includes an on-screen capacitive keyboard with high-precision hardware debounce preventing double-tap glitches, uppercase/lowercase/number modes, and Spanish characters (ñ, ¿, ¡).
• Instant Bidirectional Swapping: Tapping [ ⇄ Swap ] flips between English $\rightarrow$ Spanish and Spanish $\rightarrow$ English, automatically copying the translated text into the input field for instant reverse conversation.

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🔍 How Everything Was Engineered (Honest Technical Breakdown)

1. The Bootloader & Driver Handshake Layer

The Car Thing's Amlogic bootloader is notoriously finicky on Windows.

• install-driver.ps1: Automatically matches the USB vendor/device ID (1B8E:C003, "WorldCup Device") and silently deploys the custom WinUSB/libusb driver via CTDrvInst.exe.
• retry-handshake.ps1: Implements an automated polling loop with superbird_tool.py that watches for device attachment and safely triggers --burn_mode, shifting the device from standard USB enumeration into USB Burn Mode without manual timing guesswork.

2. The Linux OS & Display Pipeline

The device runs Nocturne Linux (7.0.2-superbird #1 SMP PREEMPT aarch64):

• Compositor: Weston Wayland compositor (weston --config=/etc/weston.ini --socket=wayland-1).
• Kiosk Engine: A specialized build of Chromium's cast_shell (chromium-bin) running directly on Wayland with OpenGL ES acceleration (--use-angle=gles --ozone-platform=wayland).
• Storage Architecture: The root filesystem (/dev/root) is mounted read-only for power-loss resilience, while user web applications, tools, and games reside on the writable /opt/nocturne partition (/dev/mmcblk0p6).

3. Hardware Control Mapping

The launcher (launcher/index.html) hooks directly into the physical hardware events:

• Rotary Encoder Wheel: Handled with an accumulator and a 70ms debounce window (window.addEventListener("wheel", ...)) so turning the dial scrolls cards smoothly without jumping.
• Dial Push Button: Dispatches Enter / MediaPlayPause to launch the focused card.
• Hardware Preset Buttons: Top buttons (1–4 / m) cycle between the GAMES, TOOLS, and APPS tabs.

4. Game Optimization (Case Study: Among Us)

Many web game bundles ship as single-file HTML files containing giant base64-encoded zip files. In the original amongus.html:

• A 7.35MB zip was base64-decoded in pure JavaScript on every launch.
• JSZip ran in-memory decompression, allocating over 150MB of RAM and taking 15–20 seconds to load.
• Web Audio threads repeatedly stalled because the kiosk runs with audio output disabled.

What we did:

1. Unbundled Disk Assets: Extracted all 42 textures, scripts (data.json, redblackset.js, pathfind.js), and sprites directly onto the device's eMMC storage.
2. File Size Slashed: Reduced the HTML file from 7.9 MB down to ~430 KB (a 95% reduction).
3. Instant Startup: Load times dropped from 20 seconds to under 1 second.
4. GPU Optimization: Forced window.devicePixelRatio = 1.0 and disabled WebGL multisample antialiasing for maximum fillrate on the Mali GPU.

5. Fixing the Microphone Hardware (recorder.html)

The background Nocturne wake-word daemon (nocturned) holds exclusive lock on ALSA device hw:0,0. As a result, standard getUserMedia browser calls failed with EBUSY (Device or resource busy).

• Discovered that the second capture link (hw:0,1 on the Superbird sound card) was completely unreserved.
• Created /etc/asound.conf to route default ALSA capture through plughw:0,1 with automatic resampling. The browser now records clean audio memos to IndexedDB without interfering with the system daemon.

6. KolibriOS: Touch Trackpad & On-Screen Keyboard

Because KolibriOS runs with a standard PS/2 mouse driver, absolute touch coordinates were ignored by the virtual machine:

• Implemented relative touch drag (touchmove) translating finger gestures into smooth PS/2 mouse-delta packets like a laptop trackpad.
• Added a dedicated MENU button in the HUD that injects the native Windows key scancode (0xE05B), opening the KolibriOS Start Menu in 1 tap.
• Added a slide-up 5-row virtual keyboard sending simulated scancodes into the x86 keyboard controller.

7. 100% Offline On-Device Neural Translator (Mozilla Bergamot / Marian NMT)

Bringing true edge-AI Machine Translation to the Spotify Car Thing without internet connectivity or a companion PC:

• Neural Engine: Powered by Mozilla Project Bergamot (Marian NMT) compiled to single-threaded WebAssembly with fallback 8-bit quantized GEMM matrix routines (int8shiftAll).
• Direct-Disk Zero-Overhead Loading: Shrunk the webapp from an unwieldy 43MB base64 bundle down to 106 KB (a 99.7% reduction). Model binaries (model.*.bin), shortlist lexicons, and SentencePiece vocabularies are stored directly on the internal eMMC flash storage and loaded asynchronously via local XMLHttpRequest (arraybuffer) in <0.2 seconds.
• Smart RAM Deallocation: Running two 17MB neural models concurrently would exhaust the Car Thing's ~450MB physical RAM and cause swap thrashing. By calling Marian's explicit C++ destructor (activeModel.delete()) prior to direction swaps, memory is instantly reclaimed, keeping total RAM consumption under ~35MB with >250MB free RAM.
• Hardware-Debounced Touch Keyboard: Embedded capacitive screens fire both pointerdown and touchstart events within 2ms of a finger touch, which causes standard web inputs to double-type characters ("ee"). Implemented a high-precision hardware debounce filter (performance.now()) with cursor-aware selection tracking, uppercase/lowercase/numbers switching, and Spanish-specific characters (ñ, ¿, ¡).
• Automatic Sentence Case Normalization: Marian NMT tokenizers require natural casing to avoid verbatim fallback. Built-in normalization seamlessly formats all-caps or lowercase input into clean sentence case before inference.
• Automotive Travel UI: Pre-loaded with one-touch travel & emergency phrase pills (gas station, hospital, help, directions) and 1-tap bidirectional swap ([ ⇄ Swap ]) that auto-populates translated responses for fluid conversation.

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🗂️ Included Web Applications

🎮 Games (23 Handheld & Dial Games)

• Among Us (Optimized direct disk runtime + virtual HUD)
• Retro Bowl (Football)
• Crossy Road
• Fruit Ninja (Touch swiping)
• Tiny Fishing
• Paper.io 2
• Draw Climber
• Helix Jump
• Stacktris & Stack
• Noob Miner (With virtual D-Pad + hotbar controls)
• Wheelie Bike
• 2048 (Rotary dial & swipe controls)
• Chrome Dino
• Trap the Cat
• Sand Game (Physics sandbox)
• Wordle Unlimited
• Doodle Jump
• Minesweeper
• Spacebar Clicker
• Opposite Day
• Age of War

🛠️ Tools Suite

• 🌐 Translator: 100% offline bidirectional Neural Machine Translation (English ↔ Spanish) powered by Mozilla Bergamot / Marian NMT WASM. Zero internet or companion PC needed.
• 🎙️ Recorder: Mic memo recorder saving directly to device storage.
• 📖 Reader: Turn pages using the dial wheel.
• 📝 Notes: Touch notepad with full virtual QWERTY keyboard.
• ⏰ Clock: Real-time clock, stopwatch, and countdown timer.
• 🧮 Calculator: Touch-friendly calculation pad.
• 💡 Lamp: Ambient light with White, Night-Vision Red, and Dim modes.

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💻 Desktop Companion App (carthing_apps.py)

A desktop companion GUI built with Python and Tkinter:

• Auto USB Detection: Monitors the USB RNDIS interface (10.42.1.242) with a live status LED indicator.
• App Manager: Drag-and-drop any self-contained HTML file or folder onto the Car Thing.
• Touch Pad Injection: Check one box (WASD pad on new HTML) to automatically inject the floating analog stick and action buttons into any game.
• One-Click Sync: Automatically uploads new assets over SCP, updates the catalog, and restarts the kiosk.
• Silent Launch: Includes a Car Thing Apps.lnk Windows shortcut configured with pythonw.exe to launch without a black console window.

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⚡ 1-Click Complete Installer

Getting everything onto your Car Thing takes just one double-click:

1. Plug your Car Thing into your PC via USB.
2. Double-click 1-Click-Install.bat (or run python install.py).

The automated installer will:

• Detect your Car Thing on the USB network (10.42.1.242).
• Deploy the 3D coverflow launcher, catalog, and touchscreen fixing scripts.
• Deploy all 23 games (including optimized Among Us) and the Tools suite (Reader, Voice Recorder, Notes, Clock, Lamp).
• Deploy KolibriOS x86 PC emulation with the touch trackpad and on-screen keyboard.
• Configure ALSA dual-link microphone capture in /etc/asound.conf.
• Create a Car Thing Apps shortcut on your Windows Desktop.
• Restart the kiosk on the device so it immediately lights up with your new system!

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🛠️ Complete Setup Guide (From Scratch to Gaming)

Scenario A: Your Car Thing Already Has Nocturne Linux

If your Car Thing already boots into Nocturne OS:

1. Clone this repo:

   git clone https://github.com/Gilzone/carthing-apps.git
   cd carthing-apps

2. Double-click 1-Click-Install.bat. You're done!

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Scenario B: Starting from a Stock or Bricked Car Thing

Everything needed to revive a stock or bricked device is provided directly in this repository and our official release:

1. Download the Nocturne OS Image:
   • Download nocturne_image_v4.1.3.zip directly from the Releases page.
2. Install Bootloader Driver (Windows):
   • Run tools/flashing/install-driver.ps1 (or use Zadig) to install the WinUSB driver for Amlogic device 1B8E:C003.
3. Flash the Firmware:
   • Put your Car Thing into USB Burn Mode (hold buttons 1 + 4 while plugging into USB).
   • Flash using the included tools/flashing/flashthing-cli.exe or the web flasher:

     tools\flashing\flashthing-cli.exe flash path\to\nocturne_image_v4.1.3.zip

4. Deploy Apps:
   • Once the Car Thing reboots into Nocturne, double-click 1-Click-Install.bat to deploy the complete launcher, games, and tools suite!

Command Line Usage (add_project.py)

# Add a single HTML app to the Apps tab
python add_project.py "C:\path\to\app.html" --name "Weather" --hint "Local forecast"

# Add an app with the virtual touch pad injected and deploy immediately
python add_project.py "C:\path\to\game.html" --pad --deploy

# List all installed apps
python add_project.py --list

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🙏 Credits & Acknowledgements

This project stands on the shoulders of the incredible open-source and retro-tech communities who fought to keep the Spotify Car Thing alive:

• Hardware & Flashing Pioneers:

  • frederic — Groundbreaking reverse engineering work, u-boot commands, and memory dumps for the Spotify Car Thing (superbird).
  • bishopdynamics (superbird-tool) — The cross-platform Python hacking toolkit that made communicating with the Amlogic bootloader accessible.
  • superna9999 (pyamlboot) — Open-source Amlogic USB boot protocol implementation.
  • willsturgeon & Car Thing Community (flashthing-cli) — Easy-to-use flashing utilities for community firmware images.
  • Pete Batard / Akeo (Zadig) — WinUSB and libusb driver installer for Windows bootloader interfacing.

• Operating System & Runtime:

  • Nocturne OS Team & meraz9000 — The custom embedded Linux kernel (7.0.2-superbird), Weston Wayland integration, and Chromium kiosk environment that gave Car Thing a true second life.
  • ALSA Project — Advanced Linux Sound Architecture enabling dual-link capture routing.
  • Weston / Wayland & Chromium Project — Lightweight GPU-accelerated embedded display stack.

• Virtualization & Emulation:

  • Fabian Hemmer / copy (v86) — High-performance x86 PC hardware emulator written in WebAssembly and JavaScript.
  • KolibriOS Project — The astonishing 32-bit x86 graphical operating system written entirely in assembly language.
  • SeaBIOS & VGABIOS — Standard open-source x86 BIOS.
  • Ruffle Team — Open-source Flash Player emulator in Rust / WebAssembly.

• Game Developers & Preservationists:

  • Innersloth — Creators of the original Among Us (and the web preservation community for making touch-friendly portable ports).
  • Gabriele Cirulli — Creator of the legendary open-source puzzle game 2048.
  • 3kh0 & the Web Game preservation community — For curating and maintaining lightweight HTML5 game archives.
  • All respective original creators of Retro Bowl (New Star Games), Crossy Road (Hipster Whale), Chrome Dino (Google), Fruit Ninja (Halfbrick), and Doodle Jump (Lima Sky).

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📜 License

This project is open-source under the MIT License. Created with passion for keeping discontinued hardware alive and out of landfills. All trademarks and copyrighted game assets remain property of their respective creators.