Let’s get started!

Requirements:

There’s a few things we need to work with the hardware we’ve got, here’s a list so if you want to get them early, you can!

macOS

$ brew update
$ brew install erlang
$ brew install elixir
$ brew install fwup squashfs coreutils

Also, you’ll need to install the driver for the USB-Serial adapter

Linux

# Install Erlang Solutions repo
$ wget https://packages.erlang-solutions.com/erlang-solutions_1.0_all.deb && sudo dpkg -i erlang-solutions_1.0_all.deb

$ sudo apt-get update

# Install Erlang
$ sudo apt-get install esl-erlang

# Install Elixir
$sudo apt-get install elixir

# Install askpass for burning firmware
$ sudo apt-get install ssh-askpass

# Install squashfs for constructing firmware images
$ sudo apt-get install squashfs-tools

# Install picocom for talking to the device over the serial adaptor
$ sudo apt-get install picocom

Windows

Some people have had success using the Windows Subsystem for Linux or a virtual machine… So I guess follow the Linux instructions?

Install Nerves

First up, make sure our tools are up to date, so we’ll do these:

$ mix local.hex
$ mix local.rebar

Then we’ll install the Nerves Bootstrap archive. This sets up mix and installs a project generator which we’ll need in a moment.

$ mix archive.install https://github.com/nerves-project/archives/raw/master/nerves_bootstrap.ez