Nerves provides tooling and libraries for building small, self-contained software images using the rock-solid Erlang virtual machine hardware support of Linux, and development experience of Elixir for microprocessor-based embedded systems.
Nerves uses the Linux kernel to support a large variety of hardware.
This is free and open source software.
Features include:
- Portable – runs out-of-the-box on commonly available hardware. Nerves leverages Linux and Buildroot to minimize the effort to port to other devices.
- Lean – uses Elixir Mix releases to include only the code you need. Most Nerves ports provide a Linux kernel and runtime with the basics so that you build up rather than trim down. Firmware sizes start in the 20-30 MB range.
- Reliable – uses the Erlang runtime system, known for being distributed, fault-tolerant, soft real-time, and highly available. Nerves firmware is immutable so you know exactly what software is running.
- Secure – avoid hidden bugs and vulnerabilities with Nerves’ secure opt-in approach to building. Nerves starts minimal and provides regular security updates to Erlang and Linux components. SBOM information is available via the Buildroot integration.
- Efficient – use Erlang and Elixir’s I/O optimizations such as IOData that minimize data copies over the entire stack.
- Extensible – one part of the vibrant Elixir ecosystem. Take advantage of other Elixir projects like Phoenix, Nx, Livebook and more in embedded projects.
Website: nerves-project.org
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Nerves Project developers
License: Apache License 2.0
Nerves is written in Elixir. Learn Elixir with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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