FlashThing

FlashThing is a tool for quickly and easily flashing the Spotify Car Thing (Superbird). FlashThing is composed of three parts:

• FlashThing: Rust crate for flashing superbird.
• FlashThing CLI: Command line interface for FlashThing.
• FlashThing Node: N-API bindings for FlashThing.

FlashThing currently supports flashing the Stock partition tables as well as custom partition tables using a subset of the Terbium meta.json standard.

Installation

Node Module Installation

npm install flashthing
yarn add flashthing
pnpm add flashthing
bun add flashthing

Platform Specific Notes

Linux

FlashThing requires libusb to be installed, and a udev rule must be set up to access the Car Thing. To install the udev rule, run the following command:

sudo flashthing-cli --udev

macOS

FlashThing requires libusb to be installed. You can install it using Homebrew:

brew install libusb

Usage

CLI Usage

❯ flashthing-cli --help
cli for flashing the Spotify Car Thing

Usage: flashthing-cli [OPTIONS] [PATH]

Arguments:
  [PATH]  Path to a zip file or a directory. Defaults to the current working directory if omitted

Options:
  -s, --stock    Whether the directory or archive contains a stock dump with no `meta.json` file
      --unbrick  Whether to unbrick the device
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

Node Module Usage

import { FlashThing, type FlashEvent } from 'flashthing';

const callback = (event: FlashEvent) => {
  console.log('Flash event:', event);
};

const flasher = new FlashThing(callback);
await flasher.openArchive('path/to/archive.zip');

console.log(`Total flashing steps: ${flasher.getNumSteps()}`);
await flasher.flash();

Project Structure

.
├── bindings # N-API bindings
├── cli # command line interface
└── lib # main library - has all the logic