nerves-project/nerves

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

2484 stars · 206 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Nerves is a framework and set of tools for building and deploying small, self-contained firmware images for embedded Linux devices using Elixir and the Erlang virtual machine. It integrates with Buildroot to provide minimal Linux runtimes and lets developers use the broader Elixir ecosystem on microprocessor-based hardware.

Use cases

• build firmware for Raspberry Pi in Elixir
• deploy fault-tolerant software to embedded devices
• run Phoenix LiveView on embedded hardware
• create immutable OTA-updatable firmware images
• prototype IoT devices with Livebook on real hardware
• build lean embedded Linux systems with the BEAM runtime

When to choose

• you want to write embedded software in Elixir or Erlang
• you need small, immutable, reliable firmware images for Linux-capable boards
• you want fault-tolerant, soft real-time behavior from the BEAM on edge devices
• you prefer leveraging the Elixir ecosystem (Phoenix, Nx, Livebook) on hardware

When to avoid

• you target microcontrollers without Linux support
• you need a full general-purpose Linux distribution with a traditional package ecosystem
• your team has no Elixir/Erlang experience and cannot invest in learning it
• you need hard real-time guarantees

Facets

framework · maturity stable

embedded build-tool deployment sdk embedded-systems developer-tools cross-platform elixir embedded iot beam buildroot firmware iot erlang-vm elixir linux

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="nerves-project/nerves")