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Core Team Stand Up Meeting Notes

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Greg Mefford edited this page Mar 8, 2019 · 51 revisions

This page is for capturing notes about what was discussed in our core team stand-up meetings, in reverse-chronological order.

2019-03-08

Greg Mefford

  • Good feedback from people about Lone Star training
  • Started work on profiling the ./upload.sh process to see why it takes so long over SSH
  • Planning to spend some time following up on little issues with docs, but too busy lately

2019-02-22

Greg Mefford

  • Mostly working on training updates to Elixir 1.8, Nerves 1.4, Phoenix 1.4
  • Struggling with Cowboy2 closing my Picam MJPEG streams after 60 seconds 😦
  • Got nerves_examples updated for Elixir 1.8 and Nerves 1.4

Frank Hunleth

  • Coordinating with Peer for GRiSP v2, to be announced at Code BEAM SF
  • Erlang Ecosystem Foundation and GRiSP v2 board

Justin Schneck

  • Mostly prep work on Nerves Hub / for training
  • Updated client to transition from phoenix_channel_client to phoenix_client
  • Eliminated device dependency on firmware, so the client say assert what firmware it's running

2019-02-08

Justin Schneck

  • Working on training stuff and related NervesHub features to support it
  • Prepping for Lone Star
  • Getting the Nerves test server working with NervesHub
  • Building a FarmBot! 🎉

Greg Mefford

  • Prepping for LoneStar training, getting hardware ordered and code updated to latest Nerves

Connor Rigby

  • Prepping talk for Code BEAM
  • Putting together integrated presentation software with Scenic for a fancy Farmbot demo

2019-01-11

Connor Rigby

  • Non-stop network stuff, lots of hacks no longer required for nerves_network

Greg Mefford

  • Working in new features for Picam (multiple video output resolutions, HDMI preview)
  • Updating / adding some new things to Nerves camera training for Lone Star ElixirConf

Frank Hunleth

  • Neat Nerves Key renders, posted in #nerves-dev channel
  • Some prep for Nerves training at Empex LA
  • rpi_fb_capture library for grabbing the frame buffer on raspberry pi
  • Working on performance improvements for nerves_runtime and system_registry
  • Justin also working on training stuff

2018-12-28

Greg Mefford

  • Working on configfs stuff for rpi0 system

    • PR #62 for nerves_system_rpi0 is ready for review

      We had a long discussion about what to do. The current plan is to look into making the rpi0 system have a runtime component that can do some initialization and have Shoehorn pick it up automatically somehow, also look into what we can use from Erlang's startup phases/init process, so we don't add more complexity to Shoehorn)

    • Would like to finalize an initial release of usb_gadget - feedback welcome

    • PR #32 for nerves_init_gadget is available but currently depends on unreleased usb_gadget and includes NIC bonding - need to look into multi-homing for nerves_network / one_dhcpd

  • Released RC0 of Blinkchain (formerly nerves_neopixel)

Frank Hunleth

  • Mostly working on Circuits stuff, GPIO is almost ready for initial release
  • Would love to have help working on tools to collect "crash info" after a reboot - It's close but needs some more work

2018-11-02

Greg Mefford

  • Recovering from Gig City Elixir post-conference exhaustion
  • Working on some improvements to the hello_network example

Frank Hunleth

  • Baltimore Elixir Meetup planning a PR-meeting where people who show up can work on a PR and get it ready to be merged
  • Working on Elixir Circuits - I2C is starting to look really good, others are basically working well (effectively elixir_ale 2.0)
  • They will have Erlang bindings as well and be named stuff like circuits_spi, etc.
  • Local makerspace is making Nerves Keys via a Kickstarter ~ January

Justin Schneck

  • Nerves Hub update for all things certificates
  • Support for Nerves Key (compress and decompress certificates)
  • Lone Star training
  • Delegated authentication for devices via Nerves Hub

Connor Rigby

  • Slowly making progress on nerves_examples
  • Also slowly working on nerves_network and nerves_wpa_supplicant

2018-10-19

Justin Schneck

  • Working on a big update to the Nerves Hub CA, restricting path length, better root cert controls
  • CRLs weren't working because we didn't store enough details about the certs as they were generated
  • Pretty much all Erlang now using the Voltone x509 library, which is 💯

Greg Mefford

  • Not much Nerves progress lately
  • Lone Star Elixir training coming up

Frank Hunleth

  • Also focused on crypto stuff with the crypto chip for devices
  • Working on Elixir Circuits library updates
  • Working on several releases

Connor Rigby

  • Has a blog post staged about using PRUs on BBB, but waiting for nerves_system_bbb v2.0.0 to drop before posting
  • Working on Nerves Hub client stuff, waiting on CA changes to settle and then get things onto real releases instead of GitHub refs

2018-10-05

Justin Schneck

  • Working on Nerves Hub a lot since ElixirConf
  • Planning on big changes to certificate structure to prep for CRLs

Greg Mefford

  • Mostly just answering questions and looking into a bug with the kiosk system build in Docker
  • Look into not host-mounting the Buildroot download volume because it is now unpacking git repos and causing problems
  • Want to work on getting the USB Gadget stuff updated and working for Zero system - need to figure out a way for it to just work on boot without nerves_init_gadget.

Frank Hunleth

  • Really focused lately on new system releases
  • Want to get the BeagleBone PRUs stuff figured out before making that one official
  • New project called my_helpers to collect every little helper script that's nice to collect. Plan would be to remove Nerves.Runtime.Helpers eventually because it feels like the barrier to adding things there is too high.

Connor Rigby

  • Nonstop on Nerves Hub lately
  • Embedded Elixir post staged and just about ready to go out
  • Working on better support for Scenic drivers with RPi / SPI framebuffer displays

2018-08-24

Greg Mefford

  • Working on ConfigFS-based USB gadget devices, in order to better support Windows hosts
  • Splitting up a bunch of changes into smaller separate PRs for nerves_init_gadget
  • Prepping for ElixirConf training

Justin Schneck

  • Released provisioning stuff to support Nerves Hub demo
  • Send out email instructions on Monday for training prep
  • Prepping for keynote

Frank Hunleth

  • Working on a simple DHCP server
  • Prepping for ElixirConf

Connor Rigby

  • Nothing in particular to report pre-ElixirConf
  • Hoping to dedicate October to re-working the networking code

2018-07-27

Justin Schneck

  • Elixir 1.7 updates with Connor, making sure we have backwards-compatibility on Shoehorn and Nerves, relating to Distillery. Waiting on a Distillery update with some fixes.
  • Dabbling with Canadian Cross toolchains and running into issues. Giving up.

Greg Mefford

  • Working on USB Gadget support options - main problem currently seems to be on Linux, both network interfaces are detected but only one works, so it warns.

Frank Hunleth

  • Toolchain frustration with compiling on OSX, mostly postponing for now.
  • Working on a nerves_system_br update to allow QT apps to compile outside of the Nerves system build. This is really useful for example on the kiosk system.
  • Linux kernel updates to BBB in use at SmartRent.
  • Working with Connor on some Linux kernel config linter. Found some best-practice changes that we should change in our systems.
  • SmartRent is working on an update to RingLogger to allow better filtering per-level, etc. Need to look into the Logger-related changes in Elixir 1.7 to see if that changes anything.

Tim Mecklem

  • Working on better support for building custom systems on Windows
  • WSL thinks it's Linux, so it messes up the Docker build platform integration
  • Fighting against Docker/WSL integration. It's complicated.

2018-06-15

Justin Schneck

  • Pushing out updates to the various systems
  • Discussed deprecating qemu-arm system due to difficulty to support emulator/slow builds
  • Updates to circle processes
    • Long build times, were using the caching system incorrectly since it’s write once
    • Worked on pushing to S3 and/or using Circle CI artifact API
  • Planning to help Frank as much as possible for kernel updates to Raspberry Pi, then bring those forward to the kiosk systems to potentially address LAN driver issues

Connor Rigby

  • Working on network stuff, heading down the “replace the Elixir code with standard ifup/ifdown code” route
  • Testing Beaglebone PRU stuff

Frank Hunleth

  • Pushed the Beaglebone PRU stuff
  • fwup 1.2 released and on homebrew
  • Mostly time spent recently on project management on nerves-hub
  • Writing a blog post for serial numbers and how to provision numbers, looking for a review today

Tim Mecklem

  • Nerves PR review and testing for WSL firmware burn
  • Windows support coming along with the various pieces contributed by Connor and the wsl PR
  • Digging in to nbtty and waiting for gadget serial device to appear

Greg Mefford

  • Working with Tim on the Windows support
  • Need to get dhcp server working for training to avoid link local pain

2018-06-01

Justin Schneck

  • Working on Nerves Hub and building excitement on it
  • Currently working on an sbroker based Process Pool broker to be able to use sequential port numbers.
  • Nerves Hub work pushed some changes into systems, so prepping all the systems for an update.
  • Want to get the shoehorn PR in as well

Frank Hunleth

  • Working to get serial number support in for systems so that node and network names can take advantage of it. Solves the problem of many nerves devices on a network all trying to use nerves.local
  • Want to get linux 4.14 in a system update soon, will probably take a couple of weeks to shake things out and make sure we have all the right configuration.
  • BBB system needs a change to fix device tree overlays

Connor Rigby

  • Working hard with Frank to come up with a good API for interacting with network layer
  • Interacting regularly with people on the elixirforum.com Nerves section. Great job!

Tim Mecklem

  • Testing the firmware.push PR on Windows and Mac, focusing on that in the short term
  • Multi SSID still in flight but secondary on priority
  • Focusing on responding to new posts on elixirforum.com to make it a responsive environment so people feel they can trust it as an outlet for support

Areas of support

There are a couple of areas where some help would move things forward and alleviate Frank and Justin's backlog

  • Linux kernel 4.14 updates for Raspberry Pi and BBB systems
  • Parser for network status updates - see Frank for details

2018-05-18

Tim Mecklem

  • Working on a branch for multiple WiFi SSID support and Windows support
  • Working on a thing internally for RingLogger messages over Phoenix Channels, might be able to contribute some/all of it as OSS

Greg Mefford

  • Working on training and a talk for Code BEAM STO.
  • Looking at nerves_networking, nerves_wpa_supplicant

Connor Rigby

  • Thinking about Windows support as a side effect of wanting USB mass storage support
  • Building a configfs project separate from nerves_runtime, involving lots of shelling out, so trying to make that better.
  • Working on nerves_networking and nerves_wpa_supplicant

Paulo Gonzalez

  • Recently wrote a stellar blog post 🌟
  • Excited to join the community and help out
  • Interested in keeping the Slack community going the way it is, and also ramp up the participation on Elixir Forum

Justin Schneck

  • Working with SmartRent on the firmware update server to support device connections to the server using websockets and client certificates.

Team discussion about how to handle the Elixir forum

  • The Slack community is really great for real-time support
  • The forum already exists and people are going to post Nerves-related things there under the tag whether or not we have a dedicated sub-site
  • It could be another great avenue for posting small updates and push people to our documentation
  • A forum is a great place to contribute asynchronously if that's how your personal schedule allows
  • We can link from Slack to a forum answer, but we should optimize for solving the documentation problem that caused them to have a question
  • We should use these as indicators to improve the documentation
  • Funnel questions/problems from Slack to Forum to Docs organically and/or intentionally
  • Paulo has volunteered specifically to keep us honest and start to seed content from Slack to Forum
  • It would be good to get in the habit of posting about new releases of all the Nerves organization projects, potentially with some automation based on change logs, so people have better visibility into the many things we're working on.
  • Decision is to work with the Elixir Forum to get the Nerves sub-site set up and commit to being as active there as we can be.

2018-05-04

Frank Hunleth

  • Nerves 1.0 is a thing. 🎉
  • NIF code for ElixirCircuits organization (formerly ElixirALE) is working - need more attention

Greg Mefford

  • Nerves training at Code BEAM Stockholm is happening
  • Looking at an overhaul of nerves_wpa_supplicant's API.

Justin Schneck

  • Just Nerves 1.0 and getting various systems updated

Connor Rigby

  • Made some progress on Windows support for configfs, mainly for rpi0
  • Planning to make some progress on networking this week
  • Need to work together on how to make a smooth transition path if we need to break APIs

2018-04-20

Frank Hunleth

  • ElixirConf EU done! 🎉
  • Focusing on Nerves 1.0 stuff
  • New nerves_system_br
  • Working on updating all the systems
  • Lots of little changes to RingLogger
  • For now, we don't support Windows in Nerves 1.0

Greg Mefford

  • Talking about Nerves training at Code BEAM Stockholm, but not firmed up yet
  • Going to update nerves_examples to show how to start a project with nerves_init_gadget and pare back anything using non-core Nerves project repos

Justin Schneck

  • Just back from ElixirConf EU
  • Working on training prep for ElixirConf US
  • Working on Nerves Reloader (formerly known as Reactor)
  • Trying to work down the time it takes mix firmware to run
  • Wanting to get more into working on the firmware update server

Connor Rigby

  • Finished moving! 🎉
  • Working on some nerves_network stuff, mostly maintenance

2018-04-06

Frank Hunleth

  • Working on training for ElixirConf EU
  • Plans to get Nerves 1.0 finally released afterword
  • Got contacted for Nerves training in Sweden - going to forward to Greg and Justin

Tim Mecklem

  • Working on an Elixir consulting project for Gaslight, with a focus on open-source and community involvement 🎉
  • Hoping to get more time to contribute back to Nerves issues on GH as well

Greg Mefford

  • Got contacted about Nerves training in ElixirConf Asia 2019 (not sure which country this will be in)

Justin Schneck

  • Improving the aesthetics and boot performance of the kiosk systems
  • Submitted a training for Nerves training based on the kiosk platform

2018-03-23

Frank Hunleth

  • Another Nerves RC release with lots of little changes. Getting closer to a real release.
  • Mainly just need documentation and small bugfixes.

Justin Schneck

  • System Registry update with fixes for decoupling producers and consumers to make them asynchronous.
  • (Had to take a call and missed some notes 😅)

Connor Rigby

  • Nerves Network updates
  • Kind of involved with the Shoehorn discussion.
  • Forked SQLite library from Erlang to Elixir.
    • Don't really need much Ecto in SQLite, so just using it without Ecto.
  • Want to keep working on fwup GUI.

Greg Mefford

  • Submitted a training proposal (with Tim Mecklem) for ElixirConf US.
  • Same curriculum as I used for Lone Star (but with some more polish).
  • Want to ensure that the training works on Windows as well, if at all possible.

2018-03-09

Justin Schneck

  • Working on lots of little features that are helpful for commercial environments:
    • Artifact sites can pass headers and query params (e.g. for authorization headers)
    • Adding ssh client with agent forwarding to the Docker image for nerves_system_br
    • Troubleshooting issues with RingLogger causing BEAM issues on x86_64 when log volume is high
  • Finishing up issues for Nerves 1.0
  • Experimenting with Distillery option to allow a configuration provider that allows config.exs to be loaded at runtime.
    • There's an issue with Shoehorn with applications being loaded as temporary
    • Working on an option to allow Applications to set their start_permanence
    • As an interim step,

Frank Hunleth

  • Cleaning things up with lots of little PRs
  • Firmware management server is in progress
    • Nothing to share yet
    • People can get in touch if they want to get involved

Greg Mefford

  • People enjoyed LoneStar Nerves training
  • ElixirConf US training CFP just opened, so let's talk about strategy for that

2018-02-09

Frank Hunleth

  • Working on circular logger with Justin, it's much better than the console backend
  • Going to be publishing a small shim (called shimmy) for containing ports or daemons to properly close them if the BEAM shuts them down
  • SmartRent has started working on the firmware management server (intended to be open-source, but not yet)

Chris Coté

  • Still pushing through the kitting system, still pretty specific to our product (with Arduino firmwares, etc.)
  • Busy getting it out the door now, so will have to make it more general-purpose
  • Planning to push Nerves at CODEBEAM SF: lots of IoT but not Nerves.

Greg Mefford

  • Prepping for LoneStar ElixirConf training
  • Working on several Picam PRs

Justin Schneck

  • Justin is working on host tools infrastructure to support things like rust and pru compilers (probably the last "major" feature before 1.0)
  • Beefed up the tests to cover the host tools.

2018-01-26

Frank Hunleth

  • Presentation tomorrow, so not a lot of Nerves work, just helping with the things Justin's working on.

Justin Schneck

  • Working on changes to the Nerves compiler infrastructure and a Nerves 0.9.0 release.
  • Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on a Nerves 1.0.0-rc1 release.
  • We've moved the network operations to mix deps.get so it doesn't download artifacts during mix compile time.
  • There's some community effort around supporting BeagleBone PRU compiler using the Nerves Platform behavior, which is neat that we were able to support that kind of extension. Frank has concerns that we can discuss separately.

Tim Mecklem

  • Went down the rabbit hole of Windows USB gadget support. Currently kind of stuck on some sysfs stuff.
  • More interest in Nerves generated at Code Mash. Hosted an open-space to walk people through getting started in 20 minutes.
  • LoneStar ElixirConf keynote coming up. Also, stickers for the Nerves training!

Chris Coté

  • Consulting on a Nerves-based product
  • Working on a "kitting system" to sync up unique firmwares, compiling Arduino firmware, flashing SD cards with certificates and encryption keys, device registration back-end, etc. https://github.com/rosetta-home/kitting_system
  • Working on a mqtt-based system to syncing data to a cloud server (metrics, pictures, etc.)
  • Talk accepted at Code BEAM SF (March 14-15), talking about Firmata library.

Greg Mefford

  • LoneStar Training prep
  • syslog and kmsg log collection RFC/PR
  • zbar library for barcode-scanning from a JPEG image
  • Planning a PR to add annotation support to the picam library

Jeff Smith

  • Working on USB printing at work from Nerves
  • Experimenting with a "comcast" library to simulate network failures we see at work

Connor Rigby

  • Added conditional features to the Nerves linter
  • Working on a Nerves-based joystick library
  • Working on a wrapper around conman to try to deal with some network issues, especially with hostapd
  • Started working on a PowerPC compiler, but unlikely to do much more with it

2018-01-12

Frank Hunleth & Justin Schneck

  • Working to put out new system and toolchain releases primarily for:
    • Easier support for reverting back to old images (not as big a deal as expected)
    • Fix the bug where if you download the artifacts and they stop mid-way, to try again instead of getting stuck
    • Running into issues with changing functionality in the nerves_bootstrap archive, and trying to decide the best path forward

Connor Rigby

  • Wrote some blog posts and answered a lot of questions in Slack ❤️

Greg Mefford

  • Nearly ready to release a new version of nerves_neopixel, which is backwards-incompatible but has support for a lot of new features for drawing on a matrix using a C port with a simple ASCII interface.

Amos King

  • Working on IPv6 support for Nerves at work
  • Thinking a lot about testing in hardware

2017-12-15

Frank Hunleth

  • Working on hardware-in-the-loop test infrastructure this week
  • Mostly working now, planning to wrap up the docs and publish a blog post
  • Hardware testing and ability to revert failed firmware

Justin Schneck

  • Hardware test uses Bootloader to detect test firmware failures and revert without bricking the device
  • On every commit to a system, it will post back the test results to the GitHub commit
  • Need to clean some things up still with how the new firmwares get downloaded and tested
  • Working on getting WebEngine things working for Kiosk systems
  • Have a way for a system to have a preferred platform to build under because WebEngine has some path-length issues.
  • Motion to rename Bootloader to Shoehorn - get your boot on - everyone agrees. 😄

Greg Mefford

  • Focused on training materials for Lone Star
  • Fixing some rough edges based on going through some training exercises (e.g. the Nerves System Shell docs)
  • Thinking about making Docker the standard for Nerves System Shell both Linux and non-Linux hosts

Jeff Smith

  • Mostly real work stuff on Le Tote's Kiosk system
  • Working with erlexec, which is really nice for Port management
  • Thinking about how to use it as a generic way to use this as a daemon-management system from within Nerves
  • Working on some picam features (e.g. motion vectors)

2017-12-01

Frank Hunleth

  • SmartRent is going to sponsor the update/device management server work
  • The specs are being defined, work will probably start in Jan
  • Need to figure out if log-collection and crash reporting is part of the update server
  • Working on an update letter to donors about recent Nerves work
  • Looking forward to having hardware test lab set up for CI

Tim Mecklem

  • Looks like there is a path forward for fwup on Windows using WSL
  • Planning on a blog post initially, maybe a mix-integrated solution following
  • Will need to figure out the gadget serial/network integration with Windows

Greg Mefford

  • Updating the nerves_neopixel library for rpi0 and RGBW support
  • Identified and helped fix a few bugs with Justin Schneck with the Nerves plugin for Distillery
  • Working on training materials for LoneStar (using picam)

Connor Rigby

  • Working on some checks for the Linux kernel configs
  • Playing with firmware management server a little - seems like it won't be too hard on the back-end, mostly UI
  • Chris Cote and Greg have volunteered to help with the front-end, suggest using Elm
  • Tim Mecklem says that some Gaslighters have volunteered to help with front-end and design
  • Keeping up with Amos King's nerves_network work

2017-11-17

Frank:

  • Merged the WebEngine patches into nerves_system_br that aren't yet in a buildroot release itself
  • Amos King is working with Schneider Electric to open-source some of their nerves_network stuff

Chris:

  • nerves_system_rpi built-in wifi support
  • mqtt firmware upgrades, starting document to capture requirements

Justin:

  • Getting stuff updated for WebEngine (Chromium instead of ancient WebKit) on Kiosk systems for rpi3 and x86
  • Still working with CircleCI internal issues preventing Nerves project configurations from building that are under the LeToteTeam organization
  • Giving a talk at ElixirConf Mexico this week

Greg:

  • Gave a talk at Elixir with Love conference, but it wasn't recorded.
  • Talked to a few people at EWL who were interested in Nerves, and maybe one that had actually used it for a project.
  • Planning on re-giving the talk at a local meetup, maybe in December, so we can record and share.
  • Working on a few small random PRs to clean up issues.
  • Starting to work on LoneStar ElixirConf training coming up with needs for picam.

Jeff:

  • (mostly real work stuff on RFID)
  • PSA: Le Tote has open-sourced a ThingMagic SDK for RFID in Nerves
  • Working on libudev NIF for better low-level hardware notifications (https://github.com/electricshaman/udev)
  • We should really look at using this for elixir_ale instead of using a Port for performance reasons

Connor:

  • Helping people answer questions on the Slack channel
  • (super busy with work stuff)
  • Will reach out to Amos to help with nerves_network stuff

Tim:

  • Not much progress with Windows support
  • Working on the RFM69 library support
  • Some issues where the Zero is slow unless you connect to the gadget serial first.
  • Frank says this really shouldn't be a problem with nbtty.
  • Tim will post more details and Connor will follow up about similar issues on BBGW.
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