@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:
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.
It really comes down to what your budget is and what you plan to do with the Pi long term. If I recall correctly, the Nerves Livebook distribution booted up uses about 100mb of memory. So anything above the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (in terms of available memory) will be more than capable for what you throw at it for this book and future Nerves projects.
If you plan on using the Pi after this book for a lightweight desktop computer or media player, you may want to get the 8GB or 16GB Pi 5.
To be clear, are you saying the Pi Zero 2 W is not sufficient?
I am still not 100% sure which Pi I would need. (I would like to keep total spend as low as possible.) Can you add this information to the book? Minimum viable Pi, recommended Pi, etc. Thanks!
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).
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