Official project updates

nerves_system_br, v1.17.3
Updates from Erlang/OTP 24.1.2 to 24.1.4. Here are changelogs for 24.1.3 and 24.1.4.

A number of nice updates, more consistent text handling, local time support if timezone is available, works more nicely in scripts and can now handle Nerves devices where no application data partition exists.

shoehorn, v0.8.0
Removes support for Distillery which was the way of building Erlang releases for Elixir before mix release came out. It still exists but not for Shoehorn.

vintage_net_direct, v0.10.3
Support for one_dhcpd v1.0.0.

vintage_net_mobile, v0.10.3
Allow muontrap v1.0.0 to be used.

Community updates

New book: Build a Binary Clock with Elixir and Nerves
Frank Hunleth (of the Nerves Team) and Bruce Tate (prolific author) have put together this book on Nerves and, knowing Bruce, software design. Check it out :)

I found the Tweet thread most interesting for some context. Also there is a glam shot of the device itself from Bruce in there.

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
The Pi Zero has been a fantastic little unit for Nerves for as long as I've been using Nerves. So when Raspberry Pi launched a new version the Zero .. Two .. Double U, that's exciting. More info on the device here, also the launch news post.

Now I've received mine and with the recommendation from Frank that it would likely work best off of the nerves_system_rpi3a system rather than nerves_system_rpi0 I've tried it and at a first bash it worked fine except having no wifi. I haven't really done anything with it yet.

Frank posted about trying it with some of the Kernel updates and such that would make it work fully and that sounded promising.

Overall it is physically the same as the Zero, but about 5 times faster. It can also draw more power which might cause issues if you want to power it from your USB port in your computer but we haven't had an issue so far. This might make it an even smaller replacement for the Raspberry Pi 3 A+ as the best compact Nerves board with single cable gadget ethernet + power.

Blog post: Finally using your Raspberry Pi
I wrote this up around all the assorted stuff I've done with Nerves recently to hopefully entice people into putting their Pi-collection into action with Nerves and Elixir. Feel free to share it to the Pi hoarders in your life. If that's you, hope it helps a bit.

OTP 25 ARM JIT buzz on the Twitters
This is only community news because it is only on Twitter so far. But if you follow the EEF embedded workgroup you might know that the JIT work continues. And eventually it will apply to ARM too. So Frank apparently has tested it on a Pi 4 and it looks promising :)

Inky Impression, eInk screen support coming along
If you have the most recent version of the Inky eInk display, the 7 color Inky Impression, you are very welcome to help test and verify the new support for it coming for the Inky library, it lives in this Merge Request for the moment: inky#37

Blog post: Connect Nerves Devices Forming an Erlang Cluster
Masatoshi shares his notes on mDNS Bridge configuration, Distributed Erlang and good instructions for getting started.

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