November 2018
Welcome back to the world of apertus°
... Home of FOSS, open hardware, professional digital cinema and imaging tools.
Development updates
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Factory Hub Vienna (Tele) Electronics Production Facility
Factory Hub Vienna (Tele) Electronics Production Facility
Production
As you know, up to now, all AXIOM Beta Developer Kits have been hand-assembled. Where scaling-up production is concerned this wouldn’t be practical. Across 2018 we’ve been evaluating options for a mass-production run of the camera’s printed circuit boards. You’ll be pleased to know that, whilst things aren’t finalised at this stage, we’ve refined the options to the most appropriate candidates. For those of you who’ve been waiting patiently, which we’re very grateful for, be assured that negotiations are starting to look realistic and that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
AXIOM WebRemote
Thanks to BAndiT1983, excellent progress has been made on the camera’s internal control daemon - a central software keystone that is meant to deal with any parameter change related to the image sensor or image sensor processing pipeline. This is required for remote controlling the camera. Initial development is now almost completed.

apertus° Labs: Task 939
AXIOM PhotonSDI Plugin Module V2 Bring-up
The second generation of the AXIOM PhotonSDI plugin module’s printed circuit boards have been received from OSHPark and part-populated. This month the module’s developer, Felix Held, visited Vienna to work on its software. The tests that were conducted on this, partially populated, prototype of the hardware showed that it’s functioning correctly albeit with some minor issues that will be fixed in the next revision. On gateware: PhotonSDI code is currently existing and being developed in several building blocks that will be connected together and tested as a whole eventually, and interfacing between the plugin module and the camera is work in progress.
Calibration Dark Box
In order to work on colour science and experimental RAW recording, members of the Magic Lantern team require 24/7 access to an AXIOM Beta Developer Kit test camera. Recently a dark-box was built to facilitate this and remaining tasks are mainly documentation/calibration related.

Remote access to the test camera is possible for anyone who’d like to work on the camera’s software and access credentials will be given on request.

apertus° Wiki: Remote Access
AXIOM Remote
Concepts for the AXIOM Remote enclosure have been 3D printed, refinements related to its attachment mechanism (to the camera) are being made now (this is the first step towards ordering aluminium milled parts). The concept GUI of the AXIOM Remote is also progressing with a general menu navigation prototype fully working plus a template camera parameter “page” operational as well.
apertus° Labs: GUI Firmware Development
WebRemote Desktop
The AXIOM WebRemote is designed to be cross platform compatible and is served to any device connecting to an AXIOM Beta over network (wifi or wired). It will also be packaged as a desktop application (again for any platform) as demonstrated by Francis Pimenta.

apertus° Labs: Task 939
New Style Articles
We are transforming the website content to the new layout/design one page/article after the other so expect to see the content slowly transform.

Some highlights from the articles archive are:
Contribute
github apertus labs wiki
Dark Box
Calibration Dark Box
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 answer your questions - get in touch with us):
Linux Kernel Driver
The AXIOM Beta features an FTDI connected to the ZYNQ JTAG port and internal I2C bus. While the FTDI JTAG can be already used with OpenOCD, the I2C bus is missing kernel support.
Task 730 - Linux Kernel Driver for AXIOM Beta Debug Interface
USB3.0 Plugin Module
The AXIOM Beta will soon feature a USB 3.0 Plugin with a Lattic FPGA to transfer raw video data via USB. Immediate goals are to implement gearwork and communication interface, implement link training, and to simulate/test the interface and gearwork. HDL and SERDES Know-how required.
To correspond, a PC-side receiver is reliant on the successful completion of this task.
Task 885 - USB Module Gearwork