April 2018
Welcome back to the world of apertus°
... Home of FOSS, open hardware, professional digital cinema and imaging tools.
Development updates
Mastodon Logo Twitter Logo
AXIOM Beta at Kuffner Observatory
AXIOM Beta at Kuffner Observatory
Kuffner Observatory
The Kuffner observatory in Vienna was founded in 1884 and survived two world wars. Several scientific breakthroughs were made here over 120 years ago. The observatory still maintains a 3000mm heliometer (measuring the variation of the sun's diameter at different seasons of the year), the largest of its type that was ever built.

With the likelihood of future astronomical related projects in mind, we paid several visits to this historic dome at night during April as we wanted to see how the AXIOM Beta would behave when attached to a refracting telescope of this size.

Wikipedia: Kuffner Observatory
AXIOM Beta at Kuffner Observatory
GSoC 2018
The student application window fell from the 12th to the 27th of March and the project received a good choice of high standard applications for the program. Google awarded six slots to students who'll engage in development of the AXIOM Beta software across the summer months. Items that will be worked on include; defining the future raw video file format for AXIOM cameras (evaluating Magic Lantern Video), raw image debayering methods (OpenCine), image sensor emulation, live histogram/vectorscope/waveform, FPGA real-time focus peaking, and FPGA bi-directional packet protocols.
AXIOM Remote
The first development prototype of the AXIOM Remote (a device with buttons, dials, rocker switches and a small LCD to change/control any camera parameter) printed circuit boards has been designed and routed, ordered and received. Another unit will be assembled shortly so that software development can commence. This first version is not meant to be perfect (for testing we just used a simple 6x6mm Alps push-button type - not the more expensive ones with better haptic feedback) but should provide a good foundation for developers to focus on ensuring that the menus work and how to create an intuitive and pleasant user experience when operating an AXIOM camera.
AXIOM Beta Enclosure
Milled parts have been ordered but purely to test the quality of a specific supplier’s output. If standards are good we may bulk-buy individual components so we have our own CNC mill available for prototyping. A meeting has been scheduled for the first week of May to discuss manufacture/assembly arrangements.
AXIOM Beta Hardware Update
After the first PCBs for the new power board were received, a partially populated prototype was created and the system bring-up (creating software that reaches and controls the different hardware elements/chips) has begun. Minor bugs that were found during initial bring-up have been corrected in a more recent version and while the bring-up is still in progress (a lot of software has to be written and tested) the new boards were ordered and have been received. So far everything looks fine and the design works as intended.
Contribute
github apertus labs wiki
AXIOM Beta Image Sensor CMV12000
AXIOM Beta ZIF Sensor Frontend
If you are looking for a task to get into AXIOM Beta development you might consider the following a good starting point (we are happy to support you on getting started and answering your questions - get in touch with us):
Management of image sensor calibration files
Currently, the sensor calibration files (unique for every image sensor), which are generated through these methods … are stored as image files in any directory (e.g. darkframe-x1.pgm) inside the AXIOM Beta, which is fine for small experiments. But this solution quickly falls apart as soon as you use different image capture settings. Therefore, it’s desirable to have these calibration files organized in a better way (maybe with checksums and metadata about the parameters of the calibration method, time, situation and validation results).

https://lab.apertus.org/T720