Official project updates

Elixir 1.12 and Erlang/OTP 24 updates
So Elixir 1.12 is good and ready with Nerves. If you see any warnings or weirdness, get in touch on the Slack or in the Github Issues to let us know.

OTP 24 support is still in progress. It will be released along with a nerves_system_br update that also updates to Buildroot 2021.05. So that’s coming up with some nice security hardening and improved Software Bill-of-Materials (SBOM) support.

nerves_ssh, v0.2.2
I’ve been seeing a lot of LFE activity recently and this is more on that. So LFE is Lisp-Flavored Erlang, a project by Robert Virding, and it just got 2.0 released.

This provides LFE shell support for Nerves SSH.

Community updates

Livebook, now with input fields
So Livebook just got support for input fields. So what does that have to do with Nerves? Contribution opportunity. Frank created the nerves_livebook system you might have seen on the Elixir Wizards livestream which should be a very cool introduction to Elixir, to Nerves and to hardware. The new update fits incredibly well with some of these examples.

I want to urge you as readers to go check to make sure it receives some good PRs for making use of this new input feature. Look at the wifi sample, it is begging for an input field. And you can help. Maybe take a ride through the rest and see where it would be cool as well.

Featured project: Elixir on industrial hardware

by Ryota Kinukawa

From the Nerves crowd in Japan I was graciously informed that pojiro has created a new Nerves system/target. The PLC board F3RP70 from Yokogawa.

He also documented his efforts to give a guide to other people curious about making Nerves run on new hardware. So do give it a read!

Guide on dev.to in English: Elixir on Industrial Hardware
Twitter announcement
Hex package: nerves_system_f3rp70

Nerves technical note: Toolshed

Toolshed provides more IEx helpers to make working at the IEx prompt on Nerves devices a more pleasant experience. This also includes file path autocompletion for ease of navigating deep directory hierarchies. See https://github.com/elixir-toolshed/toolshed for more information.

- Frank

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