4K Open-Source AXIOM Beta Camera Development Update

After successfully funding and exceeding their funding goal for the World’s 1st 4K Open-Source camera – the AXIOM Beta, the team at Apertus have been working hard on developing the camera. Earlier today they released the following November 2014 progress report.

They have just finished the preliminary design of the board layout schematic for the 4K Super35 CMV12000 sensor board that will be the foundation for the AXIOM Beta. They build up on the existing design and created the board schematic above by incorporating new features suggested during the crowd-funding campaign.

Here’s a list of the improvements and design features:

• The sensor board contains an EEPROM to store sensor model, voltages and unique identifiers

• The sensor board can be rotated by 180 degree and still work with the same interface board (auto discovery to detect orientation)

• The sensor board specifies and verifies what sensor voltages are desired and required (up to six voltages can be requested)

• There are no parts on the top of the PCB except for the sensor/sensor socket to facilitate any kind of cooling system

• There is a cut-out area in the middle to connect to a heat sink or to measure sensor temperature with a thermopile

According to the development team, the designed interface is meant to be “generic enough to accommodate a number of other sensors without any changes to the interface board connections.” This way the modular integrity is preserved, as the AXIOM Beta is meant to be the foundation block for the design towards the modularity they are gunning for with the future planned full-fledged 4K modular camera – the AXIOM Gamma.

Apertus are welcoming suggestions and input from experienced engineers or anyone experienced in comfortable with schematics and/or board layout. Their technical review and evaluation of the design is important to the development team, as it may lead to the discovery of errors and omissions, so if you can see any of these in the board design do let the guys at Apertus know. This preliminary design is pending further evaluation testing before they can build it.

Axiom Beta Remote Controller Menu Simulator

Below is an early draft stage design of the remote control menu structure, but more functions can be added on later, by building up upon the foundation and looking for ways make the menu structure as intuitive as possible. Clicking on the image below takes you to the online Axiom Beta Remote Control Menu Simulator.

The development team is also still looking for a name for the AXIOM Beta Remote controller (which was called “the Dictator” in a previous version in honour of Linus Torvalds, an open-source pioneer). Suggestions are accepted here: http://lab.apertus.org/V3

Layer images:

axiom_beta_sensor_cmv12000_v0.9_all.png

axiom_beta_sensor_cmv12000_v0.9_top.png

axiom_beta_sensor_cmv12000_v0.9_sig1.png

axiom_beta_sensor_cmv12000_v0.9_sig2.png

axiom_beta_sensor_cmv12000_v0.9_bottom.png

Eagle files:

axiom_beta_sensor_cmv12000_v0.9.sch

axiom_beta_sensor_cmv12000_v0.9.brd

Full Schematic in pdf. Read the full progress report here.