Official project updates

The easy and friendly way of getting started with Nerves has been updated :)

Update Livebook to v0.4.0
Update Elixir to 1.13.0
Update Nerves Systems to use Erlang 24.1.7, Buildroot 2021.08.2 and miscellaneous platform-specific bug fixes and improvements.

The system that all other systems build from, so this means system updates. The full list below.

Buildroot 2021.08.2
Erlang/OTP 24.1.7. Also see Erlang/OTP 24.1.6 changes and Erlang/OTP 24.1.5 changes

System updates

nerves_system_rpi3a, v1.17.3
nerves_system_osd32mp1, v0.8.3
nerves_system_x86_64, v1.17.3
nerves_system_vultr, v0.14.3
nerves_system_rpi4, v1.17.3
nerves_system_rpi3, v1.17.4
nerves_system_rpi2, v1.17.3
nerves_system_rpi, v1.17.3
nerves_system_rpi0, v1.17.3
nerves_system_bbb, v2.12.3

So that should be all the official systems at nerves_system_br v1.17.4 with Erlang 24.1.7 and Buildroot 2021.08.2.

ring_logger, v0.8.3

Pull all application environment configuration from :logger, RingLogger rather than some from there and some from :ring_logger. Adding configuration under :ring_logger is still supported, but prints a deprecation warning. Thanks to Jason Axelson for this fix.

nerves_motd, v0.1.6

Add :extra_rows option to allow users to supply additional information to be printed in the MOTD. The use case for this is to show project-specific information like MQTT connection status in addition to the generic info.

Community updates

We've seen some work on OpenCV on Nerves with the evision project. This tweet shows the project working on a Pi4 with Nerves!

And apparently it works in Livebook. The author covers some of their approach in this thread.

As someone who's been playing with livestreaming in Elixir and generally like screwing around with media and visuals, this is fantastic news! Now to figure out what can be done with it at this point.

This is connected with Anna Lito Michala's talk at Code BEAM America 2021 about Machine Learning, IoT and Erlang, discussing the feasability of Erlang for edge device machine learning. It involves this robot car kit so I'm officially in trouble.

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