HN Showcase
Back to browse
Open-source digital signage ecosystem to escape vendor lock-in

Open-source digital signage ecosystem to escape vendor lock-in

by sagiadinos·Mar 3, 2026·1 point·0 comments
Visit ProjectView on HN

Post Description

In 2011 I needed a SMIL-compatible CMS to manage hundreds of IAdea players for a client. Nothing affordable existed, so I built one commercially. Over the years resellers started building their own proprietary players instead of paying for certified hardware. Most failed. So in 2017 I built and open-sourced the media player.

An Android launcher, a proxy, and a CMS followed. The goal: a complete, open digital signage ecosystem that anyone can run, extend, or contribute to.

What's in the stack: - garlic-hub: self-hosted CMS for device and content management - garlic-player: SMIL media player for Linux, Android, macOS, Windows - garlic-launcher: root-free Android kiosk launcher - garlic-proxy: proxy for restricted network environments

Live demo: https://garlic-hub.com (login: admin / Demo1234!) GitHub: https://github.com/garlic-signage

PHP 8.4, PHPStan Level 8, 99% test coverage. All AGPL-3.0.

I'm around to answer questions about SMIL, architecture decisions, or why open standards matter in digital signage.

Similar Projects

Open Source●●Solid

An asset management platform built with Kotlin, Ktor, and libvips

Path-first image management is the neat idea here: you can reference semantic URLs like /assets/user/123/profile instead of juggling opaque IDs. The project pairs Ktor non-blocking IO with libvips for fast processing and exposes features you actually care about — on-demand vs eager variant generation, LQIPs, redirect templating and cache control — all Dockerized with docs and an image on GHCR. It isn't reinventing the wheel (Thumbor, Imgproxy and others exist), but it's a competent, usable open-source alternative for teams who want to self-host.

Niche GemShip It
dmaiken
113mo ago