So there is bare metal Erlang on the Grisp boards and that's usually a virtual machine. Haven't dug into that at all but seems cool: https://www.grisp.org/
The Nerves project is perhaps a more pragmatic approach that is in production use that I really like which uses a fairly light Linux to get the VM up and running: https://www.nerves-project.org/
With Nerves you mostly write Elixir or Erlang to build your device functionality.
Ah man I love Erlang and might have to look into that first board some more. I may be able to port one of my more ambitious projects to it depending on what all it supports.
The Nerves project is perhaps a more pragmatic approach that is in production use that I really like which uses a fairly light Linux to get the VM up and running: https://www.nerves-project.org/
With Nerves you mostly write Elixir or Erlang to build your device functionality.