Official project updates

A brief note on the library news. I've just now discovered an issue in my (not very) sophisticated tooling for building out this newsletter and realized it can miss releases. I'll be looking at a fix for that but it won't hold back this issue of the newsletter. For example it wouldn't tell me about this:

nerves_system_rpi3a, v1.17.2
Support for the Pi Zero 2 W! Who knew it was basically a 3A+ but not.

vintage_net, v0.11.3
Improvements to DHCP handling and errors on stopping.

vintage_net qmi, v0.2.10 and v0.2.11
More reasonable watchdog petting, logging, correct bar reporting and some other bug fixes.

nerves_bootstrap, v1.10.5
Remove old reference to Mix.Config.

nerves, v1.7.12
Allow Elixir 1.13.0-rc.0 to be used for building projects. So far it looks fine and shouldn't cause issues. Also adds a message after the build completes to let you know what to do next.

mdns_lite, v0.8.4
I (Lars) had a small hand in this one and am immeasurably proud of this. Thanks to Frank and team for all the work on it.
MdnsLite doesn't require vintage_net anymore which allows you to use it on your local machine or elsewhere without special incantations.

Also vendors a fix for a bug in OTP 24.1.2 that we discovered during a livestream. It is otherwise fixed in OTP 24.1.5.

nerves_livebook, v0.3.2
Update to Livebook 0.3.2.
Simplify SSH login to not require username.
Updated Nerves system to bring in support for the Pi Zero 2 W (rpi3a).

circuits_quickstart, v0.4.7
Gadget mode on the Pi 4 and support for Pi Zero 2 W (rpi3a).

Community updates

Philip Sampaio is working on pre-compiled NIFs using Rustler. That's good news for being able to use Rustler with Nerves. See tweet here.

Jason Axelson has been reporting good progress on the Inky Impression implementation for those who are curious to run a 7 color eInk display. It is working but could be faster. And we should clean up things a bit before we're ready to do a release.

Do let me know if you run into other Nerves-related community news or if you've published something about Nerves. Love to hear it, love to share it.

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