AXIOM Alpha presentation at the Photonik Congress Berlin
Submitted by Sebastian on Mon, 03/03/2014 - 16:45
We arrived in Berlin the day before the Photonik Congress started, where apertus° proudly presented the biggest development of the AXIOM prototype at the "Make Light" exhibition. I had never visited Berlin. In fact, I'd never visited Germany before. My impressions were quite similar to the image that lots of people had enthusiastically described to me: a youthful, vivid and very dynamic city.
It's always exciting to attend an event with apertus°, and you never know what to expect. The congress took place in the huge Radisson Blu Hotel and I quickly found Mister Sebastian Pichelhofer and Sir Herbert Poetzl. Sebastian asked me if I had seen “the thing in the lobby”, I replied that I had not. But I'm sure anyone can miss the world’s largest cylindrical aquarium that contains one million litres of water. Later, I understood the strange expression on his face when I said "I think I saw a fish". People had just started to enter and half an hour later the place was completely crowded. It wasn't long before groups of people were gathered around the neat little setup Sebastian and Herbert had arranged on a presentation-table right in the centre of the exposition hall. Here, we presented no less than a breakthrough in the development process: live, realtime Full HD HDMI output from the AXIOM Alpha prototype.
This feature is something that Herbert has been working on during the hours when 'normal' people are sleeping. Herbert was counting pixels when most of us were counting sheep ;) In fact, the night before the congress, Sebastian and Herbert were still busy implementing fixed pattern noise compensation in the comfort of their Hotel.
And since the congress was such a long day, this was also a good test of at least 12 hours of continuous running time for the prototype. For me, it was the first real-time footage I saw and it was quite amazing, especially after we fiddled around with the gamma curves. The global shutter and the super crisp image is already impressive. Just hold on a little longer until we post actual footage from the HDMI output. I must say that the congress was very well organized. We met a lot of interesting people and some possible new cooperations that might boost the development of the AXIOM.
The overall atmosphere was very nice, with live music and a laser harp accompaniment in the evening, all followed by one of the best buffets you can imagine. But of course, the main reason I took the trip to Berlin was to get my personalized apertus° business-cards!
Photo credits: Oscar Spierenburg, Sebastian Pichelhofer, Creative commons: mariusz kluzniak
and the AXIOM project is certified Open Hardware by
.
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