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Roku LT Operating System open source distribution
- krackers 4mo ago>that is already used in our industry-changing Roku remote controls. Why does a remote control require a RTOS?
- SpecialistK 4mo agoVoice command handling, I would suspect.
- topspin 4mo agoRoku remotes are sophisticated devices. There are many models, so features vary, but among the possible features are 3.5mm audio output, Bluetooth audio, voice command input, Wi-Fi, infrared, battery charger and other things. Clearly a substantial MCU is present and thus, an RTOS.
- NDlurker 4mo agoPretty sure they don't have gyroscopes and accelerometers anymore, but they did early on. It was basically a Wii Mote and I played a ton of Angry Birds on my TV.
- _ZeD_ 4mo agoto spy on you
- phh 4mo agoYou can do an IR remote without a RTOS, but as soon as you do BLE you realistically need a RTOS. You have timers for keep-alives, connection states, competing interrupts, CPU-"intensive" tasks that can be preempted (for crypto)
- RomanVoropaev 4mo ago[flagged]
- jgalt212 4mo agoPlease someone make a Roku remote with a physical keyboard.
- relyks 4mo agoThis might be possible now. I think the better option is having a hardware device that acts a bridge between a bluetooth keyboard and the Roku.
- snailmailman 4mo agoOn my rokus, I am able to use my phone as a remote via the roku app. This includes typing on mobile via my phone's keyboard. Makes logging into things much easier.
- criddell 4mo agoAppleTV is like that too. It's nice being able to use the password manager on my phone rather than have try to enter some long complicated password a letter at a time.
- zzrrt 4mo agoYou can probably do it with a keyboard paired to a server/RPi that emits the keystrokes to the Roku ECP API, if having that second device is acceptable.
- dd8601fn 4mo agoRokus have a rest api that accept all the navigation and text inputs you'd do with the remote.
- LoganDark 4mo agoI wish they would offer the instruction in text as well rather than only in videos. Videos become stale and can't easily be used as a reference.
- LeFantome 4mo agoGet an AI to transcribe the videos for you and then ask it to create a manual from the transcription.
- LoganDark 4mo agoThat's actually not the worst idea, thanks.
- olyjohn 4mo agoGod I have put together so many things now, where I have to watch a 30 minute youtube video. All I needed was a 1 page diagram and I'd have been done, but they gotta show close ups of each screw head as it's put in.
- c0balt 4mo agoThat looks neat, the code appears be mostly in C, seems reasonable documented and is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/rokudev/lt-sdk https://github.com/rokudev/lt-sdk
- phantomathkg 4mo agoThe good thing is, it is not written in Brightscript.
- aturek 4mo agoBrightscript could have been worse! And much, much better, as well
- phantomathkg 4mo agoHow could it be better? Brightscript is a proprietary language that serves nothing but a low power STB.
- dubcanada 4mo agoOn hackers news a technology focused platform where custom weird languages thrive. You're complaining about a company who the original developer made their own language. Isn't this exactly how all of the other languages where created?
- mik3y 4mo ago> How could it be better? On a purely language basis, I'd start with the things the BrighterScript [1] folks have done to clean up the warts and inconveniences of the language. Personally I'd rather it not exist. Roku would be more pleasant to develop on had they chosen a more popular, existing language as the basis (e.g. Python). Then the task of developing for the platform ~mostly reduces from "learn a new language and a new framework" to just the latter. I suppose it hasn't inhibited their success, of course. [1] https://github.com/rokucommunity/brighterscript
- pslab 4mo ago[flagged]
- FloatArtifact 4mo agoOpen source all you want! It doesn't change the fact that they're spying the contents of your screen no matter what input is being used with Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology https://docs.roku.com/published/acrservicepolicy/en/CA https://docs.roku.com/published/acrservicepolicy/en/CA
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- riedel 4mo agoThe original idea of open source or rather free software is to bmactually "own" the code in a way that you can modify it to your needs. Guess this is not the case here, then. But I guess also most of android falls in that category that by now. I guess we should be using better,more attributes when describing open source
- paxcoder 4mo ago[dead]
- bogwog 4mo ago"Free software" has always been a misleading term, unfortunately. Maybe calling it "Freedom software" instead would be clearer. But when you conflate free software with open source, you get confused people cheerleading their own abuse. Android is probably the worst offender here. Google Chrome, VSCode are others that come to mind.
- miki123211 4mo agoThere's at least: source available - whether you can read the code open source - whether you can run (a modified version of) the code on some piece of hardware you own open hardware - whether the hardware they sell you lets you run modified versions of their code open contribution - whether they want your modifications free software - whether your modifications have to be open source too If it's at least source available, it can have any combination of these.
- ddtaylor 4mo agoDoes this meaningfully allow a person to push a modified version to their own TV without using a screwdriver?
- jon-wood 4mo agoFrom the front page of the site at least, no. This isn't for the Roku device itself (which is almost certainly running some flavour of Linux), its for peripherals like the remote control which will have much less powerful processors.
- dsign 4mo agoI wonder what would make this better (for some use cases at least) than venerable FreeRTOS? Or Zephyr? Or any of the other many, many RTOSes? In particular, the ESP32 comes with top notch documentation and SDKs that will make beginners at least want to stay with Espressif's modified RTOS for a while.
- jon-wood 4mo agoThat's also what I was wondering. What problems is this custom RTOS solving that all the other ones don't, or is it in fact just that some Roku engineers decided they needed some job security and having an OS nobody else uses would be a good path to that?
- sitzkrieg 4mo agoafter looking at it, i would use anything else over the roku stuff if i felt the need for tasking. bare metal esp32 is easy with the espressif sdk anyway . esp32 is way too power budget heavy for anything using batteries though. even using all deep sleep available a msp430 will leave it in the dust by a large factor. i’m surprised they use such large devices in remotes but go figure
- tecleandor 4mo agoI don't know if I'm missing something but from what I can see... They don't seem to have any written documentation online, not even a list of features. They seem to have some doxygen docs on the repo, but they're not built anywhere. The only information ready to check are YouTube videos. The developer forum link they have in the top right doesn't work (I think since January they killed their forums). It's a chore just to know what does it do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- UnreachableCode 4mo agoOn the topic that will likely pervade this news item: does anyone know the best FOSS TV system
- hiccuphippo 4mo agoNot sure what exactly you are asking for, but check Jellyfin, it might be part of the answer.
- UnreachableCode 4mo agoJellyfin is good. I'm currently using the Roku version
- jp191919 4mo agoJellyfin is great.
- latchkey 4mo agoI know it isn't FOSS, but I just plug a $500 Mac mini into my LG TV and use it with a wireless backlit keyboard/trackpad combo I got for $35 off the zon. IINA is a fantastic player. I rarely use the tv os.