Programming Nerves (self-published)

@hugobarauna and I (Alex Koutmos) have been hard at work on writing a book on Nerves that takes you from simply blinking LEDs to building LiveView powered kiosks (and everything in between).

You’ll be building projects like:

A Morse code translator
A reaction time tester
An Etch A Sketch that renders in Livebook using knobs
Upgrading the Etch A Sketch to use a joy stick
Rending CPU temperature from the Raspberry Pi in LiveBook using VegaLite (you’ll also write a simple stress test to get the CPU hot )
A simple weather report/clock using a 20x04 LCD display
Displaying of accelerometer data using OLED displays
Interacting with accelerometer data using a LiveView kiosk

By the end of the book, you will have built a wide a array of projects and should be more than comfortable tackling some of your own Nerves projects!

Part 1: Rapid Prototyping Nerves Using Livebook

Getting Started With Livebook

Build a Morse Code Translator

Build a Traffic Light Simulator

Build a Reaction Time Game

Building the Etch A Sketch Circuit

Programming the Etch A Sketch

Part 2: Building Custom Nerves Firmwares

Build a Custom Nerves Firmware

Optimizing Your WorkflowC

Interfacing With I²C Hardware

Creating a Nerves Kiosk

Appendices

Basics of Electricity

Selecting Resistors

Using a Breadboard

Check out the book landing page for more details and to see how you can buy the book at 38% percent off while we’re in beta:

https://www.programmingnerves.dev/

Also our promo video where we show off a few of the projects that you will build:

Happy hacking!

16 comments

/nerves /livebook #book #liveview #learning

21 983 16

2026-06-08 18:25:59 UTC

First Post!

arcanemachine

Looks interesting. What is the expected timeline for the book to be completed?

Post #2

Most Liked

akoutmos

Author of Build a Weather Station with Elixir and Nerves

The goal is to have the book edited and completed by mid 2026.

Post #3

akoutmos

Author of Build a Weather Station with Elixir and Nerves

Thanks! Here is a screenshot of the “What you will need” section:

This is subject to change as the projects are tweaked here and there during Beta. That said I don’t imagine it’ll change much.

Specifically regarding the Raspberry Pi, the wiring diagrams in the book are based on the Raspberry Pi 5 like so:

But if memory serves me correctly, any Raspberry Pi that has the 40 pin header should work (Raspberry 2+) as they standardized on the pins. So you have some flexibility with regards to what hardware you use.

Post #6

akoutmos

Author of Build a Weather Station with Elixir and Nerves

Apologies if my previous comment was unclear. I meant anything with higher specs than the Pi Zero 2 W, including the Pi Zero 2 W. So I would suggest using one of the following to complete the projects within the book (also depending on what you plan on doing with the Pi long term):

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (can be found for about $20 with headers already soldered on)
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ (can be found for $40)
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (1GB version can be found for $40 and price goes up with more ram)
Raspberry Pi 5 Model B (1GB version can be found for $45 and price goes up with more ram)

Given that the Livebook distribution of Nerves will consume about 100MB of memory at idle, you have about 400MB of memory left if you go with the cheapest option in the list (that being the Pi Zero 2 W which has 512MB of memory).

Post #12

Last Post!

akoutmos

Author of Build a Weather Station with Elixir and Nerves

Hey Tomaz,

I don’t often check my social media DMs as they are always bombarded with spam…but glad you posted here!

Hugo and I are currently working on the 0.3.0 release, and with that release Part 1 of the book should be wrapped up. We’ll be sure to post here once that release is cut, but you should also automatically receive that release via ConvertKit. Hope that helps!

Post #17