Connecting Spotify Car thing to a computer

[Grief1]

So i was just recently browsing through YouTube and found out people are using Spotify Car Thing for computer setups, I thought this could be a really interesting idea for my setup and was wondering if the device has to be connected to a phone via Bluetooth or can I connect my computer to it via Bluetooth?

[spyderdsn · Accepted solution]

The car thing has to be connected to your phone, there is no way to connect the Thing to Mac or PC directly. On your desktop app, you can specify to play on the PC/Mac. Everything works until you restart your machine.

There is a very annoying limitation. You can't specify the thing to play directly on your PC via your Phone. By default plays on your Phone all the time and you have to pull up the app on your PC/Mac to switch. This will be a killer feature. All limitations are highlighted here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDkj8yz7VKo

[spyderdsn]

I would see this as:

On Car Thing within the settings is an option for default device selection. 

Play on device:

• Last used device
• David's iPhone 12 Pro
• David's MacBook Pro
• Alexa Speaker

[list of devices paired with your Spotify App on your phone]

This feature can be added with a software upgrade only and will help everyone using the Thing on the desk.

[motsu]

yes! having an option in the car things settings for a "default playback device" would be great!

I have the car thing desk setup, and i love it - the only issue is after a while of not having music playing, pressing play on the car thing will start the playback on my phone instead of the last device / PC.

Ideally, i want two car things, one next to each area i normally listen to music, and each to control that device by default. Hopefully spotify doesn't give up on the car thing, and instead pivots to supporting the desk use case

[mrbobdobolina]

I have a stupidly complex setup at my desk. I listen to Spotify on my Echo Dot, but I have the app open usually to control it. The Car Thing works well, except that my iPhone will lose sync with what song is currently playing and I have to close the app and relaunch it for ti to sync back up. Rather annoying.

[afxjzs]

What is the technical limitation of this? Both the MacBook Pro and the Car Thing see each other and can start to pair, but then the connection never completes. It would 10000% better to have it just connect directly to my macbook

[GalOiring]

they need to ad the support to the macOS Spotify app so it will connect directly via Bluetooth to the car thing.

I hope they will do it , it will be great !

(im also using it on my desktop)

[djvj]

I think they were clearancing out these units sadly. We might not ever get support for this. I want the same thing to. Trying to connect to PC and it never completes.

[Serjoso]

My HeadPhones is connected  to my pc via bluetooth. Can I use it to listen the music even car thing is connected to the Iphone?

[motsu]

yes as long as your device supports connecting to multiple bluetooth devices at the same time. Most do.

[motsu]

so, this is a very VERY overkill solution, but if any of you are already running home assistant, you can connect spotify to your HA instance, as well as use the HA companion phone app and enable the bluetooth connections sensor inside of it, so that your phone reports connected bluetooth devices to home assistant. Then, inside of home assistant, you can create an automation so that when your phone connects to the carthing, it forces spotify to play from a specific device.

I have this paired with an inline usb-c power switch on the car thing, so it is off when im not using the device i want it to control (to prevent accidental playing from the device when im not using it), however you can probably achieve similar effects by checking other things (such as if the media player you want to control is turned on, or if your logged into your pc, so on).

I use node-red as my automation logic, so this is how that looks for me. Fairly simple 🙂

 

[imark123440542]

I saw a slightly different video. https://youtu.be/_AJO8Cmyi4U

From what I understand having it connected to an iPhone it can control the desktop instance but requires starting playback on the desktop. This than allows the car thing to control the desktop instance, as the phone will mirror what's going on. I can't remember if it was mentioned in the video whether selecting the output was necessary. I too had other ideas for this device than in the car alone. So much that I want another one, and indeed actually permanently attached it to my vehicle with the adhesive, and I don't like doing that.