Welcome to the Nerves Newsletter. You've subscribed to this. Probably because you want to follow Nerves as it develops.

We'll cover a number of different things in each issue depending on what the activity looks like. We will need your help in finding and sharing featured projects/posts and talks. Don't hesitate to send in your old favorites and new discoveries. We want to make sure people get to see the best that people have done with Nerves, not just the most recent. The best way is to just respond to this email with your recommendations.

Official project updates

nerves_system_br, release: version 1.15.0
Nerves System BR provides the common logic for building Nerves Systems using Buildroot.
This release enables a few interesting features. If you are interested in cdev that should work out of the box now. Frank is also asking for anyone interested in using eBPF with Nerves to reach out as that's also a thing.

This is accompanied by matching updates to the systems for the specific boards (your rpi 0-4, BBB, etc.)

nerves_time_zones, released
The primary motivation for creating this library was to reduce the size of the time zone database. You can read more in the docs.

vintage_net, release: version 0.10.0
Improves the internet connectivity check by allowing more IP addresses to be used in checking. Make udhcpc/udhcpd chill until a network interface is up. Replaces some crypto calls that were dropped from OTP 24. And finally it will redact SAE passwords.

Nervespack has been bumped to allow the use of this new version.

Community updates

Blog post: Controlling servo in Elixir/Nerves
By Masatoshi Nishiguchi
This covers getting a servo motor running with Elixir and Nerves as well as resulted in a library for doing just that. Conveniently also lists the hardware used. Great job.

GRiSP 2 boards are in production!
From the Kickstarter: GRiSP 2 is a combination of embedded hardware and software aiming at being the best prototyping solution for Erlang and Elixir developers.

And now these boards are being made. I'm personally impressed this is at all possible in the current electronics market.

Featured Project

by Dasky

Even if you don't need a birdhouse this is very comprehensive and very useful. It covers using a Raspberry Pi, a Pi camera module, an LED, a servo motor and a temp/humidity sensor. It manages this as a poncho project. Then going beyond that it covers how to use these with LiveView to present a dashboard as well as how to send snapshots to Telegram.

It really does cover a lot of ground and is a good foundation for anyone wanting to do things with Nerves or have an excuse to dive into Elixir and LiveView with an extended weekend project.

Blog post: An IoT Birdhouse with Elixir Nerves and Phoenix LiveView Components

Have a project you think would interest the Nerves community, let us know and we might feature it.

Featured talk: Quickstarting Nerves

by Frank Hunleth

Frank explains and introduces the Elixir Circuits Quickstart Firmware to make getting started a lot easier. Good for sharing with your enthusiast friends to get them started.

I also know there are some interesting experiments happening that could make for some really good introductions in using Nerves. For now, use the talk :)

Lightning talk video: Lightning Talk - Quickstarting Nerves

Nerves technical note: Buildroot

Technical notes are brief explanations of a part of the Nerves system that attempt to shine some light on things you may not be familiar with and build a better long term understanding of Nerves. They are created by the core team members specifically for the newsletter. Today's topic: Buildroot

Buildroot is a tool for creating embedded Linux systems through cross-compilation. Nerves uses Buildroot for compiling the Linux kernel, Erlang and other non-BEAM programs and libraries. It has recipes for building 1000s of packages and is usually the easiest way to include programs written in other languages. See https://buildroot.org for more information.

- Frank

Supporting the Nerves project

We want to encourage everyone to contribute in whatever way works for them. Here are some ways we currently recommend:

• Write or port a new hardware library and include it in the Elixir Circuits collection.
• Give money to the project via Open Collective.
• Get in touch about taking over maintenance duties for some libraries, we might be able to provide you hardware.
• Apply for an EEF stipend on something Nerves-related and build it. We can help if you have questions about this.
• Send corrections or improvements for documentation wherever it fails to help you.
• Write about Nerves, give talks about Nerves. Make videos about Nerves. It is all good.

Finally, if you have questions about the newsletter or want to suggest something you can simply respond to this email it will go directly to me, Lars, who edits this thing. Let me know what you think.

- Lars, Underjord.io