Official project updates

All the official Nerves systems

New releases for:

rpi0, rpi, rpi2, rpi3, rpi3a, rpi4
osd32mp1
vultr
x86_64
bbb

These should all be safe updates of Erlang/OTP to 24.0.5 and Buildroot to 2021.05.1. Security and bug fixes all around.

Beyond that:

Provides the beta support for runtime.exs, to configure the system at runtime.
Adds the provision command for re-provisioning an SD card without rewriting all of it.
Add a default sysctl.conf that enables use of ICMP in Erlang.

nerves, v1.5.5 - An update for users stuck on 1.5.x with some bug fixes for query params.

Keynote at ElixirConf: Justin Schneck
You just might know Justin as a co-creator of the Nerves Project. That's his title on the Speaker list too. I don't believe I've seen a Justin talk I didn't enjoy and I bet I've seen almost all of them. So looking forward to this one.

Community updates

Several Nerves talks at ElixirConf US
I know I've covered a few of these as they popped up. But it is time to look at the line-up. And it is absurd how much Nerves there is :)

Justin's Keynote
My Scenic Companion, by Jason Axelson
Tip o' the mornin to ya, Nerves, by Jon Carstens
Metrics in the Small - Telemetry for Nerves Devices, by Matt Ludwigs
Printer Perfect: A Case Study in Building a 3D printer UI with Nerves and LiveView, by John Palgut

Talks covering IoT where it is unclear if they'll involve Nerves:

Pratipad: A Declarative Framework for Describing Bidirectional Data Flow in IoT Systems with Elixir, by Kentaro Kuribayashi (probably Nerves)
Real-Time Update Multi-Client GPS Logger with LiveView and Google Map API, by Yuisho Takafuji
Sink: A new protocol for distributed, fault tolerant, bandwidth sensitive IoT systems

And I'll shout-out the "Zig <3 Elixir" talk by Isaac Yonemoto since I've heard Frank likes Zig and it seems like it could be a good match with Nerves. Also, Isaac is good people.

Featured effort: Nerves books!

by Bruce Tate, Frank Hunleth and more

Bruce has talked about this on BEAM Radio as well as in other contexts. But a series of tightly scoped Nerves project books are in the making. The first has a finished draft as of a few weeks ago. And Alex Koutmos is involved in another one. I definitely haven't reviewed it and cannot speak to it being a great cohesive package for someone wanting to learn Nerves. But once it does come out, I might.

A tweet on the matter: Bruce's tweet

Certainly more to come.

Tech note: NervesTime

Time can be important on embedded devices, especially when processes and actions must happen on a schedule. For this, we created NervesTime which keeps the system time in sync with NTP or even a hardware RTC (Real Time Clock) on device. You can even get local time and time zones supported by using NervesTimeZones, which is a drastically compressed version of the usual TZ database. NervesTime can also update system time for your other non-BEAM programs.

You can find more here.

- Jon

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