Flashing the CarThing - BluDood/GlanceThing GitHub Wiki

Introduction

The CarThing does not ship with open shell access (for obvious reasons), so to gain full access to the CarThing you'll have to flash it with a custom operating system.

Note

If you have used the DeskThing project before, you may already have the right software installed. You can attempt to continue on with the GlanceThing setup, it will check if the current software environment looks good.

Using ThingFlash (recommended)

ThingFlash provides an easy way to flash your CarThing with a guided process, so this is currently the preferred way to flash your CarThing for GlanceThing. Simply download the right version for your computer, install, and follow the guided flashing process. After you are done, you can return to GlanceThing and continue setup.

Download ThingFlash here!

Using superbird-tool (old method)

Warning

This requires you to install command line tools, and there are a lot of ways to run into all kinds of issues. It is recommended to use ThingFlash instead, which automates all these steps.

You'll need at least Python 3 for this, if you do not already have it, go to python.org and download the latest release (3.13.0 as of writing this).

After you have downloaded Python, you can clone the GitHub repository which includes all the tools needed:

git clone https://github.com/thinglabsoss/superbird-tool.git

Now, you can read how to install superbird-tool on Windows / Mac / Linux here. While GlanceThing only supports Windows (for now), superbird-tool is known to not be as stable on Windows, and could cause some issues. Therefore, if you have a Mac or Linux computer handy, you may want to use that to flash CarThing.

Notably, Windows needs a driver to communicate with CarThing, which you can get by using Zadig. Currently, libusbK seems to be the most stable.

Downloading the correct image and extracting it

thingify.tools has a collection of CarThing images, including the home-made Thing Labs image with some tweaks. Most importantly this image enables ADB, allowing us to copy files over to the CarThing. As of writing this, the latest version confirmed working is 8.9.2.

Download the image here, and extract it to a folder. The folder structure should look like this:

8.9.2-thinglabs/ 
  boot_a.dump
  boot_b.dump
  bootloader.dump
  ...

Make note of the path to the extracted folder.

Using superbird-tool to flash the CarThing

You should currently be in the same folder as superbird-tool. This means that the tool superbird-tool.py should be in the current directory.

  1. Plug your CarThing into your computer. Wait for it to boot, and then run: 
    python superbird_tool.py --find_device
    Make sure the CarThing shows up.
  2. Unplug your CarThing from your computer again, and while holding button 1 and 4 (seen from the left), plug the CarThing back into your computer. The CarThing should now stay at a black screen. Run python superbird_tool.py --find_device again, and make sure it shows up in USB Mode.
  3. Enter USB Burn Mode by running the following command: 
    python superbird_tool.py --burn_mode
  4. Now you are able to flash the CarThing. Type the following command: 
    python superbird_tool.py --restore_device <path>
    replacing <path> with the path to the extracted folder you noted before.
  5. Make sure the command doesn't exit with an error, but tells you that the flash succeeded and that you can unplug the device. Unplug the CarThing and plug it back in, and it should boot as normal.

That's it, you have completed the flash of the CarThing! You can now continue on with the GlanceThing setup once the CarThing is booted.

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