AXIOM Beta USB 3.0 plugin module If you've been following the project you'll know that, where recording data is concerned, the AXIOM Beta has relied solely on external, off-the-shelf, HDMI recorders and all the pros and cons that are known to be inherent with those devices up to now. With the USB 3.0 plugin module, however, any computer with USB 3.0 connectivity can be used as an AXIOM Recorder. This will allow us to define format/container/metadata/etc. of uncompressed raw 4k footage for the...
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Last week, apertus° community member davidak , from Germany, visited Vienna and participated in a number of AXIOM related activities in the course of one week ranging from hardware assembly, software development and building ergonomic enclosure evaluation prototypes, to shooting with the AXIOM Beta. Davidak on various AXIOM duties in Vienna. Shooting the Signs of Autumn in a Vienna Park Of course, nobody wants to work on the AXIOM project without taking the camera for a spin, and so, even...
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Coding Period completed This was our first time participating in Google’s Summer of Code program and it came to an end with our student’s final evaluation period across late August to mid-September 2017. As you may or may not remember we received around 30 applications/proposals (many of which were very good), narrowed this selection down to around 5, and gratefully received 3 slots from Google in the end. After some preliminary work the students got to grips with the camera’s operating...
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We know a lot of people are waiting for news about hardware production and we are doing production and development in parallel. Our most recent article talked about progress with electronics manufacturing - in this article and Team Talk we want to share news about new ongoing developments though. AXIOM Beta Dual 6G SDI module in development When choosing between HDMI and SDI we have so far given HDMI priority as, for developers working with the AXIOM Beta, it meant a larger and more affordable...
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Developer Kits have been shipping for some time now and we are aware that the most pressing question for many of you is "When will the AXIOM Beta evolve from a Developer Kit to being a production ready camera?" This article should help to answer that question, but keep in mind that the camera has been carefully designed to evolve constantly. For a detailed itinerary of outstanding tasks and a statement on expected timeframes please see Mission Briefings on the project's Wiki. Metal Full...
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For this year’s Summer of Code, Google awarded apertus° three student slots. This is significant as new mentoring organizations are warned that they’re likely to receive a maximum of 1-2 slots in their first year. We set out to choose the best of the best from almost thirty project proposals - a difficult decision as all were of a very high standard. The chosen students have already started reading up on the required documentation and have been familiarising themselves with development tools as...
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Development History in Images These clips were shot over the course of around 18 months of development. Some of the periodic developments improved image quality eg. by reducing noise, but some tweaks didn't make the image noticeably better to any significant degree so please be aware that this collection of clips demonstrate technical snapshots relating to software and hardware development only. Nothing was shot to highlight specific aspects of the camera's development, rather, we wanted to...
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We are very proud to announce that apertus° has been accepted as a new mentoring organization for this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC) . As only a small number of new organizations are allowed to join each year and the majority already in the program have been participating for many years, this is especially exciting. For anyone not familiar, GSoC is a program where students are paid to contribute to selected open source projects between June and August. Project Overview apertus° GSoC...
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Small Hardware Changes/Upgrades here and there In this team talk, Sebastian gives a brief rundown of some recent hardware changes to the AXIOM Beta development kits. Changes include; different chips to reduce the Lattice FPGA programming time, a new connector to attach the main cooling fan (which is now held in place by noise reducing nylon screws), some schematic changes relating to the JTAG interface FTDI chips (to reduce power feedback), a new onboard sound buzzer. Also, to reduce mechanical...
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As you have probably read in our AXIOM Beta Manufacturing Report , we are still building all the early adopter AXIOM Beta developer kits completely manually. Obviously we need to increase our production speed to grow the project and to be able to deliver a reasonable amount of cameras any time soon. So in the last four months, we have put a considerable amount of time and resources into automating our production processes. The most time consuming aspect is picking and placing components onto...
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