This is part two of a recently shot round of AXIOM Team Talks. For the previous episode please see AXIOM Team Talk 15.1.

Google Summer of Code Projects

Once again apertus° participated in Google’s sponsored program for students working with open source projects like this one. Here is a brief insight into what was worked on this year for Summer of Code. Six student slots were filled with excellent applications and four students finished the program successfully.

Their projects deal with USB3 connectivity of the AXIOM Beta, JPEG1992 lossless encoding inside the AXIOM Beta’s FPGA, improvements to AXIOM Remote and the camera’s internal central control daemon.

AXIOM Remote

There has been good development progress in several areas with the camera control device, the AXIOM Remote. The device features a small display with graphical user interface, a central rotary encoder dial and physical buttons providing haptic feedback where a touchscreen (think smartphone app) simply couldn't. There is an enclosure concept, electronics prototype and software running on the device prototype already.

The User Interface (UI) was designed from the ground up to be as intuitive and responsive as possible. You won’t believe the terror that user interfaces of other high-end cinema cameras have induced in their operators over the years. For some companies it seems like, the more expensive the device the less thought through its control menu and user experience has been... but not here. Every interaction with the device is designed to provide immediate feedback (buttons lighting up, selection highlighting, options changing, etc.). It's important that every button has a crystal clear purpose - No “User Button 1” or “Custom A” that a user is must press in order to find out what’s going to happen. The display plays a central role for this as it shows icons and labels for adjacent physical push-buttons.

Illuminated Buttons Challenge

A much larger challenge than originally anticipated has been button illumination. While the selection of available components for push-buttons is huge, as soon as you want something more specific, e.g. an affordable, silent, tactile switch with significant travel distance and integrated LED, the choice dramatically shrinks down to just a few options.

Read more about the AXIOM Remote on the apertus° wiki

Up Next

The coming AXIOM Team Talk episodes will cover progress that's been made with packaging, a new small image sensor camera developed by two community members from Germany called AXIOM Micro, UV/IR optical filter measurements, new firmware and other topics.