Roku, the company that makes TV boxes and sells ad space based on your usage patterns, has released its remote control operating system as open source – and by remote control I don’t mean robot stuff or whatever, but actual remote controls, the thing you use to control your TV or whatever from the couch.
Roku has announced the official availability of Roku LT OS – a lightweight, highly deterministic open-source operating system that is already used in our industry-changing Roku remote controls.
[…]
In addition to high-performance automotive platforms, Roku LT OS is designed to be accessible to the broader developer community. The operating system ships with native support for the ESP32 platform, a highly popular SoC among hobbyists and makers. Because ESP32 development boards are widely available online for just a few dollars, developers can get started with Roku LT OS with minimal hardware investment.
↫ Roku’s developers blog
As far as I can tell, this operating system is entirely new and not based on Linux or something else, but the available documentation is light on details so I can’t make much more out of it. Regardless, it’s nice to have another open source embedded operating system.
This might be fun to play around with but I don’t know if I’d trust a platform from the “agree to our new EULA stripping you of all of your rights and giving us all of your data, or else your expensive new device is just a brick” company.
Meanwhile, for even more open source remote control shenanigans, there’s TTVKTR: https://www.cnx-software.com/2026/06/04/convert-old-ir-remote-controls-into-presentation-clickers-using-an-rp2040-usb-board-and-open-source-ttvktr-firmware/