Play OS

[Philipp_83]

I just stumbled over this link: https://www.lego.com/en-in/careers/job/60134937
Looks like Lego is going to develop a unified firmware called Play OS which I would highly appreciate.

It will hopefully support the current Powered Up devices / hubs. The development of Play OS might also be the reason why there hasn‘t been an update released for the Powered Up app for quite some time. There are still quite a view promised features not released yet (VM, support for large hub, …). 

Does anyone know more about it?

 

[kbalage]

Great, another LEGO software solution, there was clearly one more missing! 

Honestly if they are looking for a leader for "setting strategic direction for play OS platform" then they don't have much at the moment. For me this means this might be the next unified platform after Powered Up, but I wouldn't expect anything production ready within ~5 years, which might be the EOL of Powered Up anyway based on the lifespan of Power Functions. I really hope the development will not be solely controlled  by coders, it'd be great to ask average LEGO customers this time about their play concept as well that might not rely 100% on smart devices. 

Powered Up unfortunately seems to be in hibernation since 2020. With the release of the new trains we can expect at least a control profile update in June, but I'm not sure when any of the promised feature updates will arrive. Actually it'd be great to see a more or less finished solution with proper documentation before adding anything to it. 

[shroomzofdoom]

7 hours ago, kbalage said:

Great, another LEGO software solution, there was clearly one more missing! 

Make sure your calendar is free... You'll probably need to write the documentation for playOS too.  

https://racingbrick.com/powered-up-code-block-guide/

 

Maybe this will be the 'one OS to rule them all' kind of thing?

Edited May 20, 2022 by shroomzofdoom

[SaperPL]

Lol, I hope they will finally hire some experienced mobile games developer to do the front-end for the controls...

[Toastie]

9 hours ago, kbalage said:

Powered Up unfortunately seems to be in hibernation since 2020. With the release of the new trains we can expect at least a control profile update in June, but I'm not sure when any of the promised feature updates will arrive. Actually it'd be great to see a more or less finished solution with proper documentation before adding anything to it.

Oh yes. Truly. Very well said.

Thanks @kbalage for voicing this so focused!!!

Best,
Thorsten

[kbalage]

8 hours ago, shroomzofdoom said:

Maybe this will be the 'one OS to rule them all' kind of thing?

As the job description mentions leading embedded sw/fw engineers, this Play OS should be the running on the hardware, so it is not the "user facing" application. It would definitely make sense to run a single scalable firmware on the different hubs, today the need to flash different firmware versions for Mindstorms and Spike Prime that use identical hardware makes things very complicated.

But this should also allow the front end to be flexible, allowing to build a real coders' interface like Mindstorms / Spike Prime, but meanwhile also having an easy to use and intuitive configuration interface that does require zero programming. Powered Up is still very much coding-focused, average customers would only need something like the old BuWizz interface was, mimicking a simple Power Functions assembly.

Something like: Motor A -> Hub 1 port A, property "drive". Motor B -> Hub 1 port B, property "steering". And after that the ability to configure it on a deeper level, if required. And physical controllers like, buttons, levers, remotes that can be configured and the configuration saved on the hub to run without the need of app connection. Oh well, one can dream.... 

[Gimmick]

Sounds like a unified software/firmware base. Not something like we usually think of, when we hear "OS".

[howitzer]

Don't know what this is/will be, but TLG really needs to get their megablocks together with software and make a single, unified app/interface that allows using the whole product range in the same system. Preferably so that it's user-customizable so that someone not interested in coding can exclude code blocks/python stuff while those interested only in making their own code can hide the set-specific pre-made control interfaces.

[XG BC]

On 5/21/2022 at 9:00 AM, Gimmick said:

Sounds like a unified software/firmware base. Not something like we usually think of, when we hear "OS".

depends. windows is also the same on every pc it runs on. ofcourse there is no ui or gui but still.