> With a weak Amlogic processor, 4GB of eMMC storage, and only 512MB of RAM, the device is too underpowered to run anything more demanding than its intended lightweight web-based media player.
I’m a little confused by this statement — those specs are not actually that bad by any means. Running a full linux OS plus a web-based music player is a pretty heavyweight task, all things considered. It sounds like an ideal hacking device to me.
Saying "only" 512MB of RAM to run a "lightweight web-based media player" is an insult to an entire generation of people who used far less powerful computers to do far more productive things.
According to some other info I could find, the processor is an Amlogic S905D2, which is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 up to 1.896GHz.
IIRC I saw the Car Thing on sale for as cheap as $25? Actually decent specs for the price. There's so many little things you can do with this hardware. The people claiming it's ewaste just have no imagination.
This article makes no sense to me. As other's have stated, the specs aren't that bad. But looking at this line just had me scratching my head:
> With a weak Amlogic processor, 4GB of eMMC storage, and only 512MB of RAM, the device is too underpowered to run anything more demanding than its intended lightweight web-based media player.
I own a Car Thing. All I want is to be able to continue to use it as a lightweight web-based media player in my car. Seriously, what else were people hoping to do with this thing?
The headline is a little misleading because the article explains it already is open source, which nobody knew until now:
> Tech journalist Josh Hendrickson revealed that the Car Thing runs on Linux and is actually open source. The device’s extremely weak specs make it impractical for running anything beyond its intended web-based media player.
The specs don't seem all that weak. It's all relative. It could be a cool web-connected media player with a bit more functionality. It's got enough horsepower to be better at voice commands than a phone and it all likely happens locally. I think a lot of the processing and playback happened on the phone anyway. So it can really just live out as an awesome remote control.
For the majority of devs out there, they would struggle to build something that runs on this platform without paging. It's not in their wheelhouse.
Most modern containers are a run time + a pile of other code (js/ruby/python/java)... So no, not just a single binary.
And even if you want to make the argument that you can compile all those down to a single binary... I would point out that you're going to run into their limitations around file system access, and c binding (to access local GPIO pins). Again you can over come these things, but you're likely going to have to do that on the underlying os, probably with some C...
If you dont compile down to a single binary, you have the FS access, and can install the c-dependancys in your container and everything just works.
The container is then doing its job. It's a bag separating all that stuff from spilling all over the OS it lives on and the env vars it creates. It does it well. It's why we use them.
If we could run single binary blobs, the use case for containers (for deployment) shrinks drastically... Isolating 2 version of an app with some networking for fast switching, and cgroups make sense on the server side. Less so on end user machines.
Writing portable, and installable software is a hard problem. Containers are an abstraction of those issues. I no longer believe that they are a good one.
> A significant pct of small eWidget these days uboot to Linux. Just get yourself a ftdi uart connector, find the four pads and go to town.
That assumes that u-boot isn't completely locked down (which many do for production versions), that secure boot isn't implemented, and that there's enough info about the kernel and u-boot known/available to enable a second life for such devices.
Unfortunately, unlike with x86, in the embedded ARM world everyone runs their own shit BSP that got forked off of upstream a decade ago (or more).
> On top of that, since it uses one of Amlogic’s chips, it has an easy access BootRom mode, just press and hole button one and four while plugging in. From here you can use ADB, bulkcmd, UART to run custom code, dump the source code, even add your own. People already have.
I find this article overly negative. It sucks that Spotify is bricking it but I doubt they care that it’s a potato. You can still do cool things with a potato.
I have one. I wanted to use it as a general purpose status display, with a nice clicky scroll knob and nice physical buttons, which is the exact use case it was designed for.
So, this is fine. It's odd to claim that something is e-waste because it can only be used for its intended purpose, which they thought useful enough that they bought it.
Spotify isn't bricking it. Tech journalists incorrectly proclaimed it as 'bricked' because Spotify wasn't releasing any details or software. Turns out the details and software are already available.
Well, in fairness, it will stop working as a Spotify Car Thing, and Spotify itself has said you should "recycle it" (meaning throw it away and pretend it will be recycled).
That may not mean "bricked" by a technical hacker's definition, but I think that's "bricked" by the definition of 98% of people who bought the thing.
It is kind of sad that the people the journalists talked to at spotify (most likely) didn't understand that it was as open as it is, and instead went into defense mode.
As others have pointed out, you could do so much with this. It's similar to a raspberry pi or a beagle board, but it comes with Bluetooth, a screen, and a knob for input.
This is exactly the kind of thing that would be a great controller for a 3D printer or similar CNC machine.
It can still be used as a media player, even if doing so will require custom software.
It could be an interface for home automation, smart thermostat, or daily planner.
People make all kinds of devices using similar hardware every day. Rather than rolling your own, here is one that will soon be cheap on all the used markets as the average owner has no further use for it.
The article is really overly critical of this. It's not a potato and it's not necessarily e-waste if it's easily reusable.
What hardware did the author expect this to have? It's a glorified MP3 player. We used far less powerful systems for that in the early 2000s. No doubt that chip is cheap and plentiful. Why would they use anything more?
The article strays far from reporting on the news and well into an opinion piece.
If someone released software that would make it compatible with my Ender 3 Pro then that would be amazing! It would definitely lessen the sting of losing the media remote I use everyday.
It's actually a great physical device. The interface is also really nice and responsive. You can tell someone put a lot of heart into this thing, from all aspects, with a goal being something a user would want. I'm impressed by the engineering.
I don't think a specific type of code should ever be the goal, in a product, because the user doesn't give af.
I’m a little confused by this statement — those specs are not actually that bad by any means. Running a full linux OS plus a web-based music player is a pretty heavyweight task, all things considered. It sounds like an ideal hacking device to me.