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Code BEAM Europe will have Nerves flavor
I and co-conspirators from the Nerves team and beyond are putting together a Nerves Workshop for the day before Code BEAM Berlin. If you are interested, read more and sign up here. More details to come.
I will also be speaking at Code BEAM Berlin. The talk is titled "The Nerves Community Fleet" and I need community help to make it happen. And you can help entirely remotely. If you have a Nerves-capable device you can spare for a few months please sign up and I will send you firmware as it gets ready. Then we can show just how spicy Nerves can get :)
-Lars
How do you Nerves?
As we work away with Nerves we are doing our best to understand how Nerves is used and how it helps. And beyond that, how it could help further.
Unfortunately we don't know everything that gets done with Nerves and there are probably readers of this newsletter that are doing stuff we've never heard of commercially.
Please do reach out, just respond to the email or go at lars@underjord.io and I will pass along what you share :)
Project updates
This release includes support for Elixir 1.17 and is generally safe for most, but some setups may be broken and require small changes:
Minimum Elixir version is now 1.13
If using Elixir >= 1.17, vm.args.eex needs to be updated to use the run function -run elixir start_cli. Firmware builds will fail if vm.args.eex settings are incompatible with the current Elixir version to prevent unbootable images.
Bug Fix
- Docker build runner changed to mount ~/.ssh instead of attempting to use ssh-agent which would run into issues compiling systems on MacOS
Adds support for Elixir 1.17 and OTP 27. This now requires Elixir 1.13 as the minimum supported version
- New project generator updates
- Adjust vm.args.eex to support Elixir 1.17 changes
- Synchronized to match the Elixir mix new generated content
- Removes the generated target/0 function in favor of Nerves.Runtime.mix_target()
- Generated mix.exs now uses the current Elixir version in use as the required version for the newly generated project
- Various dependency updates
New features
- Support passing arguments to reboot via the /run/reboot-param file. This is required to support the Raspberry Pi’s tryboot feature to implement A/B partition failback. See the README.md for info.
- In the hostname pattern, support a special printf format specifier for trimming the left side of the serial number string. %-0.4s lets you use the 4 rightmost characters of the serial number in the hostname.
Bug fixes
- Disable core dumps before killing programs on shutdowns and reboots. This saves I/O operations that might impact the saving of important data.
- Sync before killing programs on shutdowns and reboots to reduce the amount of I/O needed during the graceful part of the shutdown
This is a security/bug fix update for 1.28.1
- Changes
- Warn, but don't fail on MacOS when building on a case insensitive filesystem and files overlap. The iptables package particularly problematic. This is a temporary workaround to help get past issues created by files that aren't actually used at runtime.
- Package updates
- Buildroot 2024.05.1
- Erlang/OTP 27.0.1
This updates erlinit to support abbreviating serial numbers for easier-to-type hostnames without forcing boardid to produce short serial numbers. If your Nerves system is still reporting short serial numbers, remove the -n 4 from your rootfs_overlay/etc/boardid.config. If you still like short serials for hostnames, edit erlinit.config to specify -n nerves-%-.4s.
- Package updates
- erlinit 1.14.0
- bb.org-overlays (bump to latest)
System updates
This is a major Erlang and Buildroot.
Please see the nerves_system_br v1.28.0 release notes for upgrade instructions if you’ve forked this system.
Changes
- Elixir 1.17 and Erlang/OTP 27 support
- Reduce copy/pasted definitions in the fwup.conf by extracting them to fwup_include/fwup-common.conf. (No functional changes)
Fixes
- The serial numbers returned by Nerves.Runtime.serial_number/0 now contain the whole serial number. If you forked this system, check the boardid.config and erlinit.config for the changes and to keep the hostname the same.
- Updated dependencies
- nerves_system_br v1.28.1
- Buildroot 2024.05
- Erlang/OTP 27.0
- Raspberry Pi system: Linux 6.6.31 (Raspberry Pi stable_20240529 release)
nerves_system_mangopi_mq_pro, v0.10.0
nerves_system_osd32mp1, v0.19.0
nerves_system_rpi0, v1.28.0, nerves_system_rpi, v1.28.0, nerves_system_rpi2, v1.28.0, nerves_system_rpi3a, v1.28.0, nerves_system_rpi3, v1.28.0,
Switch from the Raspberry Pi’s deprecated MMAL media support to DRM and libcamera. This is a big change if you use the display or camera that has been a long time coming. Please plan some time to make the upgrade.
Linux 6.6.32 (TI patches 6.6.32-ti-arm32-r6)
- Updates
- Update to Livebook v0.13.3. Also see the v0.13.0 changes
- Update to Elixir 1.17.2 and Erlang/OTP 27.0
- Update Nerves systems to nerves_system_br v1.28.1
- Update all dependencies to latest versions
- Remove picam from 32-bit Raspberry Pi releases due to the switch from MMAL to libcamera
- Updates
- Update Nerves systems to nerves_system_br v1.28.1 (Erlang/OTP 26.7, Buildroot 2024.05)
- Update to Elixir 1.17.2
- Remove power_control dependency
Other updates
Changed
- Require Elixir 1.14 and OTP 25
Added
- Add QMI_NAS_GET_SYS_INFO and QMI_NAS_GET_CELL_LOCATION_INFO
Changed
- Require Elixir 1.14 and OTP 25. This was done to support more convenient binary patterns in the QMI library.
Added
- Determine the cellular provider a different way that works reliably with multi-network SIM cards. This adds a small database to look up the provider based on MCC and MNC.
This latest release requires Elixir 1.13 or later.
- Added
- Run a NervesHub script on device (#207)
- Updated
- Simplify connection settings (#214)
This release requires Elixir 1.13 or later. Previous versions became hard to maintain due to dependent packages. No code changed in this library to prevent previous versions from working.
- Fixes
- Fix a regression that caused the firmware validity to always show up as valid even when invalid.
- Fix a regression that caused the firmware validity to always show up as valid even when invalid.
- Changes
- Fix warning when creating input GPIOs. (@pojiro)
- Fix Elixir 1.17 warnings
Community updates
Nerves Meetup!
At the previous meetup Bryan Green talked about the latest in .. 1930s era rotary phones.
The upcoming one is on the 28th of August.
The meetup is remote and available to all. Timezones allowing :)
Participating in the community
The Nerves community is found wherever Elixirists gather. Try any of the following:
- Elixir Slack, #nerves channel
- Elixir Discord
- Mastodon/Fediverse at genserver.social
- Elixir Forum Chat
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
