LG’s webOS Now Open-Sourced And Raspberry Pi-Ready

March 19, 2018 by Dave Haynes

LG is expanding the digital signage possibilities for its webOS platform beyond smart displays to devices like the wildly-popular Raspberry Pi 3, via a new webOS Open Source Edition.

The tech site Liliputing reports that LG, which bought the operating system from HP (which got it when it bought Palm), is talking to the South Korean government and startups about new use cases for webOS, beyond TVs and smart commercial displays.

What this means in the context of digital signage isn’t all that clear. LG would want its channel and end-users buying panels that ship with System on Chip and LG webOS, and have more and more CMS companies and other software shops developing to that. But open-sourcing the platform and optimizing it to run on devices like the $35/$45 Pis opens things up to a broader development community. The Pi is also a PC (albeit a very small  one) with input and output ports that would make it more malleable and diverse than a hard-wired, embedded SoCX player in commercial panels – so maybe blended networks could have lots of SoC but interactive-capable webOS Pis where needed.

Probably the broader strategy is that rival Samsung’s Tizen OS – which is what’s under the hood for that company’s smart displays – is more broadly a connected devices OS for a variety of things, like fridges. webOS right now seems to be just be for displays, but maybe that changes and the OS finds its way into smart appliances and other devices.

H/T Bryan Mongeau of Broadsign

  1. Super cool. Thanks for the update. I know the Pis I own have no problem with video which is always the acid test for digital signage.

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