Spotify’s recent news about shutting down Car Thing got me thinking. There is actually a genuine use for a music-specific device, whether for car or elsewhere. I would love to have a device that’s dedicated to playing music in my car, leaving my phone available to do whatever, whether it be phone calls with my family or even navigation without my music being interrupted. I’ve been thinking of something like this for a while, so I actually gave it a shot.
Enter: my mother’s used iPhone 11 Pro. It has 256 GB of storage, runs iOS 17, is disconnected from the cellular network, and is perfect for this experiment. For this experiment, I’ve taken several long road trips while on a phone call with my boyfriend. On each road trip, the iPhone has been connected to my car using Bluetooth, and just lays in the center console plugged in to one of my car’s USB ports for power. Since the phone has 256 GB, my entire music library can be downloaded onto the phone with roughly ~100 GB to spare (which is important because it’s not connected to a cellular network).
Honestly, it’s been great! Even when I’m not on a phone call, it’s nice to just let my main phone sit there and charge. There have been a few problems, though.
Since it’s not on a network, the only time it can sync my music library is when I’m at home and it’s connected to the Wi-Fi. So far, it hasn’t been much of a problem, but if I ever add something to my library when I’m away from home, it won’t sync unless I enable my hotspot or something.
Furthermore, power is also an issue. I don’t want to have to worry about this thing, the whole point of this is that I can just turn on my car, hit shuffle, and leave it until the next time I get in my car. I do not want to be bringing this phone in to charge every night. So, for now, it just stays in the car. It seems like my car’s USB port provides enough power for it to charge it to an acceptable level every time I go on a trip, so it hasn’t been much of an issue. However, on my way home from a recent road trip, the charger I was using stopped working and it died. I was still on a phone call, so I had to spend the rest of the trip with no music. That was certainly annoying, but I replaced the charger and it seems to be okay now? I leave for another, longer road trip tomorrow morning so I’ll report back I guess?
But anyways, I really want a dedicated music player now. I posted a Tweet recently saying “having the sudden urge to make my own hardware” and this is what I was talking about. Does anybody who knows how to make something like this wanna work with me on it? I know nothing about hardware, but I can do literally all of the software.
My ideal dedicated music player would include:
Supports every streaming service (maybe even multiple at a time?)
Supports downloads (likely impossible but a man can dream)
Works without network connectivity (if downloads are supported, otherwise some sort of tethering is okay)
Beautiful UI
Works with multiple forms of output (AUX, Bluetooth, maybe even an FM transmitter or cassette adapter)
Supports multiple form-factors (not sure if that’s the right way to describe it? would be something like: car mount, desk mount, wall mount, etc)
USB-C of course
Would be nice if it wouldn’t have to be charged & could just use power from USB port
Would be cool if it had something like iOS 17’s SharePlay integration (I already have a mobile app & server that replicates this functionality, should be relatively easy to implement here)
I am 100% serious about this, btw. If anyone out there could help me make this hardware, email me (paytondeveloper@gmail.com).