Official project updates

nerves_system_br, v1.16.0
As mentioned previously Erlang 24 support will come to Nerves along with a major buildroot update (2021.05). This is it.

This isn't in the official systems (rpi0-4, bbb, etc) yet so if you use those, keep an eye out and you'll get it. If you rely directly on the br system take a gander at those release notes, they have some important things for you. So when this rolls out to those system repos that will bring Erlang 24 to the Nerves masses.

And then we have RISC-V builds. It is not officially supported but Frank has been experimenting with it and as it becomes a more compelling option that seems a likely future. If you want to try Nerves on RISC-V, this is a starting point.

I'm sure everyone just wants Erlang 24 for the improvements to badarg errors.

Meanwhile outside of Nerves. ARM 64 JIT support just got merged into Erlang. If you have a good benchmark for Frank to run, join this thread on Twitter or reach out elsewhere.

nerves_heart, v0.3.1
Updates to the way nerves works to make it handle differences in OTP 24 as well as some other improvements.

Nerves tips!
Jon Carstens just announced he'll be running tips, for Nerves, at tips.nerves-project.org (and I'm guessing on Twitter). Hit him up with your tips and keep an eye out for these.

Featured talk: Hydro power plants with Nerves

by Yutaka Kikuchi

From the industrial actual usage side of Nerves we have this talk from ElixirConf 2020 which covers a number of topics around using Elixir and Nerves for small hydropower plants.

YouTube video: ElixirConf 2020 - Yutaka Kikuchi - Applying Elixir for driving small hydropower plants with Nerves

Nerves technical note: Shoehorn

Shoehorn is a library that changes how failures with OTP applications are handled. Normally, if an application supervisor terminates, the Erlang VM terminates. With Nerves, this results in a reboot. This may or may not be the correct response. Shoehorn lets you customize what happens.

Using the default configuration supplied by Nerves, if the OTP application that terminates is not one involved with firmware updates, the failed OTP application will remain stopped and the system will wait for user intervention or a new firmware update.

This mechanism is used in combination with an Erlang heart handler where you configure Shoehorn to get the system into a debuggable and recoverable state, but have it eventually reboot should the fault be particularly bad.

- 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