Ostromo for LG
[!NOTE]
Not finished software. A home screen I made for my own LG TV, shared as is. Expect to tweak it, with some
coding know-how or a coding agent like Claude Code, and use it at your own risk.
TL;DR
- On the TV: install LG's free Developer Mode app, sign in with a free LG developer account, switch on
Dev Mode and Key Server, and note the IP address and passphrase.
- Download
ostromo_x.y.z.ipk from the latest release.
- Install it: paste the prompt from the install guide into Claude Code, or use the webOS Dev
Manager app.
- Open Ostromo and pick your apps and inputs in SETUP. Hold a number key on the remote to pin it.
A home screen for LG webOS TVs that looks like the ship computers in Alien and Aliens: blue vector lines on black, a worn picture tube, and a boot card that plots itself on. It launches the streaming apps and HDMI inputs, and around them it shows live flights around a big airport near you, today's electricity prices, webcams at research stations, NTS radio, teletext and a sentry gun.
More about it, with video: staiola.studio/apps/ostromo
Try it
Version 0.10.1 is a beta. Download ostromo_0.10.1.ipk from the
latest release and follow
the install guide. It uses LG's free Developer Mode, so nothing is rooted, and it can be
installed by hand or by asking Claude Code to do it.
Tested on an LG C5 (2025, webOS 25). It's free.
I built it for my own TV and have made it more generic, but it's a beta: expect rough edges, and expect to
tweak it for your own setup. That takes some coding know-how, or a coding agent such as Claude Code to do it
with you. Use it at your own risk.
What to expect:
- A SETUP screen on first start, for your apps, HDMI inputs, power prices, radar airport, teletext and sounds.
- The radar watches one of 14 airports: Copenhagen, Malmö, Stockholm, Oslo, Berlin, Paris, London, New York,
Washington, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide or Perth.
- Power prices cover Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, London (Octopus Agile), New York City and eastern
Australia (the NEM). Teletext is DR (Denmark), SVT (Sweden) or ARD (Germany). DR TV works in Denmark only.
- Sounds are a set made for the public version: typing, the motion tracker and the sentry gun.
- Home and quitting an app go to LG's home screen. Hold a number key to jump back, or run the optional Home
watcher from the release on a computer that stays on.
The code
Everything is in this repository, under the MIT licence: change it, share it, build on it.
| Folder | What's in it |
|---|
nostromo/ | The webOS app: plain JavaScript drawing into a canvas, with a WebGL pass for the CRT look. One file per screen (home.js, radar.js, power.js, sentry.js …). |
nostromo-service/ | A small Node service installed next to the app on the TV. It fetches flights, prices, webcam stills and teletext, which the app can't reach directly. dev-server.js stands in for it on a computer. |
watcher/ | The optional Home watcher. |
scripts/ | build-release.sh builds the .ipk; make-sounds-b.py synthesises the sounds. |
Run it on your computer (needs Node.js), then open http://localhost:8081. Arrow keys,
Enter and Esc stand in for the remote.
npm run nostromo:preview
Put your own build on the TV. Set up Developer Mode and register the TV as a device named tv, as in the
install guide, with LG's ares tools installed (npm install -g @webos-tools/cli). Then:
npm run nostromo:install
Start your TV with your own setup instead of SETUP: copy nostromo/preset.example.js to
nostromo/preset.js and edit it.
Places to start tweaking:
- Apps a tile can launch, and their LG app ids:
nostromo/settings.js.
- Airports:
nostromo/airports.js (centre, runways, town names, zoom). The coastlines, lakes and rivers in
nostromo/maps.js are clipped from Natural Earth.
- Power prices: the regions in
nostromo/settings.js, and how each source is read in nostromo/power.js.
Denmark and New York City go through nostromo-service/energy.js; the rest answer the TV directly.
- Teletext sources:
nostromo/teletext.js.
- The webcams:
nostromo/outposts.js and nostromo-service/cams.js.
- The CRT look:
nostromo/fx.js.
Pointing Claude Code at this repository and describing what you want changed works well. Most of Ostromo
was made that way.
Follow along
- On GitHub: Watch → Custom → Releases on this repository and you get a notice when there is something to install.
- Found a problem? Open an issue and say which TV model you have.
- Like it? You can support Ostromo on Ko-fi.
Notes
28 October 2026. Version 0.10.1 is for the new Android TV version:
there, a streaming tile now finds its app by its Android package name before its title. On an LG TV it works
as 0.10 did.
27 October 2026. Version 0.10 goes beyond Denmark. In SETUP the radar can now watch 14 airports in
Scandinavia, Europe, the US and Australia, each with its own map, runways and towns, and New York zoomed in
so its traffic spreads out. At a busy airport the radar keeps its own departures and arrivals and the
nearest of the rest, 40 in all. Power prices come from Sweden, Norway, Germany, London, New York City and
eastern Australia as well as Denmark, each in its own unit, and teletext from SVT and ARD as well as DR.
Installing over 0.9 keeps your setup; the airport starts as Copenhagen.
23 October 2026, evening. UnterFace is now called Ostromo, after its own boot card, and this
repository is Ostromo for LG. Version 0.9.2 changes only the name; installing it over an earlier version
keeps your setup.
23 October 2026, later. The code is now in this repository, under the MIT licence. Version 0.9.1 adds
sound. The typing blip, the tracker's ping and the gun are synthesised in code; the sonar beep for contacts
closing in is made on a synth in Logic. The tracker now pings on a steady beat while the contact beep speeds
up and rises as they get closer, and the first contact of an attack shows at once.
23 October 2026. Version 0.9, the first one for other TVs. New since the first notes: a SETUP screen,
Ostromo's own standby screen instead of LG's clock, a smoother frame rate on the C5, symbols the fonts
lacked now drawn by the app, and the film's names swapped for its own (the computer is MA-TH-OR 6200, the
gun an LD 567-C).
21 October 2026. First public notes. The home screen, power prices, flight radar, NTS radio, teletext, DR TV, eight webcams and the sentry screen all work on the TV. Two things LG will not let a developer-mode app do: see which app is in front, so quitting Netflix lands on LG's home screen rather than this one, and read the list of installed apps.
Credits
- Fonts: Michroma and Share Tech Mono (SIL Open Font License), Bedstead (CC0). Licences in
nostromo/fonts/.
- Video playback in the browser preview: hls.js (Apache 2.0), in
nostromo/lib/.
- Map outlines: Natural Earth (public domain).
- Data: flights from adsb.fi (personal, non-commercial use) and adsbdb;
electricity prices from Energinet's Energi Data Service,
elprisetjustnu.se, hvakosterstrommen.no,
Octopus Energy, NYISO and AEMO;
teletext from DR, SVT (via texttv.nu) and ARD Text; radio from
NTS; teletext and live TV from DR; webcams from the US Antarctic
Program, the Australian Antarctic Division, the Norwegian Polar Institute, Øresundsbron, the Gemini Observatory
and the Ocean Observatories Initiative. Their terms apply to their data.
Ostromo is a fan's homage to the screens in Alien (1979), Aliens (1986) and WarGames (1983), and has nothing to do with the people who made them.
