DeskThing Download - DeskThing Source code download

DeskThing

Other source code

v0.9.2-beta

Download

Reddit Link

Trello Board

Deskthing Discord

Official Deskthing Website

Deskthing Youtube Channel

Car Thing Hax Community Discord

The DeskThing

Let's begin, shall we?

This is the DeskThing project. Using Spotify's existing Car Thing, the DeskThing makes the perfect desk assistant. In short, the DeskThing serves as an alternative OS for the Spotify Car Thing. It allows you to load up community-made apps to it to do anything from control your local audio to seeing who is in your discord call! This is an open source project made by me, Riprod, an independant developer who's not even out of college! If you waant to help contribute to this endeveavor and attetmpt to revive the car thing, you can do so through my buymeacoffee link or through Github Sponsors.

Cheers!

Dammit Jeff posted a video covering the DeskThing! Check it out here

️DO NOT PULL MAIN BRANCH️

Instead, go to The Official Website and download the installer for your OS For a video walkthrough of v0.6.0, go to this video

All instructions are up-to-date as late of v0.9.0-beta. Later versions may differ in functionality and setup

Features

The DeskThing is a simple CarThing Chromium-based website that can communicate with a Desktop APP on your computer. The CarThing can:

Note: Not all of these are updated and are pending a revision. This is new as of v0.7.0

Planned Apps

Macropad / Streamdeck
GUI Companion
Dashboard/Settings for config changes
General audio control
Advanced Spotify Stats
Home Assistant
Pomodoro Timer
Google Calendar
More details in the Trello Board

This is under constant development, so features will come as soon as I can make them. Suggestions welcome!

▶️Setting Up

Detailed Setup Instructions

‼️There is now a youtube tutorial walking through this process‼️

Setting up to v0.6.0 that shows how to flash

Upgrading to v0.8.0 from 0.6.0

Alternative flashing tutorial

Step-by-step instructions

Flash Your CarThing:

Follow the instructions in the superbird-tool repository to flash your CarThing device with the necessary image.

If you need help, refer to the detailed instructions at the end of this page

Get the installershould be under releases

Run the 'deskthing-0..--setup.' installer on your computer

Check for your device:

Under the 'Devices' tab, ensure your device shows up. If it does not, join the Discord server and report the issue, this can be buggy on some machines.

A few things to try if it isn't working is to 1: Use task manager to kill all instances of ADB 2: Run DeskThing as administrator 3: Unplug and plug in your Car thing 4: Install ADB and manually check with adb devices

If the device shows up, go to the 'Client Downloads' tab and click the latest version. It should show up at the top (Staged: Deskthing CLient)
Go back to the 'Devices' tab and click 'Push Staged Webapp' It should take a second, and then your Car Thing should restart.

Load Apps

Congrats! You're basically done. Now go to 'Apps' and then 'Webapps' and download any apps you want. Ensure you check dependencies before doing so as this could cause errors.

Any Issues? Contact me through the Deskthing discord server or via DMs to @riprod

️Note for MacOS️

First, when you install the DeskThing installer, you'll need to run

sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine DeskThing.app

to fix the app. Otherwise it'll say it's corrupted or something

Because ADB on the car thing and MacOS is funky, you need to run this on the DeskThing's ADB

chmod +x /Applications/DeskThing.app/Contents/Resources/mac/adb

Finally, the image linked above won't always work for MacOS. So instead, use the following image (it is a discord download for now) as it fixes ADB for MacOS

Go to Releases -> MACOS LISTEN UP to find the updated linkDiscord will cycle the url for the link so this one will expire after a given amnt of timeThe new location is on thingify.tools. Use v8.9.2

Thanks! Have a good day

Flashing

Alternative flashing tutorial for Windows

It is HIGHLY recommended to use the new ifixit tutorialhttps://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Install+Custom+Firmware+onto+Car+Thing/178814

Links:

image dumps
New Image Dumps
superbird-tool

Process:

Go to superbird-tool and install it based off your operating system. Come back once you can run python superbird_tool.py --find_device and see your Car Thing
Unplug the Car Thing
Hold buttons 1 and 4 (the four large top buttons are mapped from left to right) and plug it in.
Wait a few seconds. If the screen does not turn on, that means you are in boot mode. You can release the buttons
Run python superbird_tool.py --burn_mode to enter burn mode

Note: This step may say it fails to enter burn mode. This is okay, continue on as if it worked. There is information in the discord as to why this is.

Download 8.9.2-thinglabs.zip files from Thingify Tools (linked above) and in that same folder (unzip them)
(Windows only) Download zadig and install the WinUSB driver for GX-CHIP (select it and click "Install Driver")

Alternatively use libusbK if it does not work you may have to click "Show All devices" to see it

Run python superbird_tool.py --restore_device /path/to/extracted/firmware/folder (This may take a while)
After the firmware is flashed, the Car Thing should be ready with ADB enabled. To check, run adb shell ls -l /usr/share/qt-superbird-app/ and you should see webapp as one of the folders.
Ensure that adb devices works and registers whateveryouridis device as one of the options
Continue setup from here

Additional Resources

superbird-tool - This is the CarThing image that is being used. Be sure to either include this link or steps on how to flash the CarThing.
superbird-custom-webapp - The React web app framework that this project started with.
Car Thing Hax Community Discord - The discord where there is this project and so much more!

Questions? DM me on discord @riprod

️While bricking the Car Thing is extremely difficult - I don't think anyone has done it yet - the possibility is still there. I do not take any responsibility for damages done to the device. Try to use common sense️

Developing Apps

Interested in developing an app? Well here's a great place to start! Make sure you join the DeskThing discord server so I, or anyone else, can help you out!

Start with

npm create deskthing@latest

And follow the prompts to set up the app environment. From there, you can reference:

App References

These are apps that make the deskthing "firmware" functional! When you use spotify on your deskthing, it's using the spotify app (linked here). What you interact with is driven by the "src/App.tsx"

The app-side connector

This is what allows deskthing apps to "function". When you hit the pause button on the spotify app, it makes a request to the deskthing-client which routes your request (through the deskthing-app-client package, source code linked here). This deskthing-app-client request doesn't return a response, instead it listens for events through the deskthing-app-client using the "on" method.

The server-side connector

This is what allows the deskthing-server to make custom requests. When the deskthing-server gets a request to pause the current spotify song, it forwards that action through the deskthing-app-server back to the spotify apps "server/index.ts" which can be handled in your app using the deskthing-app-server "on" method to respond to custom requests from the deskthing-client.