Submitted by RexOr on Sun, 11/11/2018 - 17:54

Are you considering helping us push the project forward? Great! Your help would be very much appreciated. Anyone is free to contribute towards and help steer project developments. How integral you become in the community and in what way is entirely up to you.

The community doesn't typically make demands of people but if you need pointers on what needs to be done and how you could be useful then feel free to make contact, introduce yourself and describe what skills you have.

Basic first steps

IRC

IRC - This is a live chat facility that, despite its shortcomings, has proved to be a reliable central platform for immediate communications.

Community members should create a username and ideally select a client. There are many clients for both desktop and mobile including Hexchat, Pidgin(Desktop), AndroIRC (Mobile), and many others.

Main channel: #apertus
Address: irc.freenode.net
Port (if required): 6667

We also run a web-client IRC portal on apertus.org if you'd like to communicate straight away without installing clients etc. It's like a shout-box and reliability is inconsistent.

A list of IRC commands can be found here, IRC Communications in the main channel are publicly logged here, and previous team meetings are archived here. If you have questions about the camera but work with a commercially sensitive project we'd be happy to set up a meeting inside a private channel for you, if this is something that would interest you please email us.

You may also want to read through the apertus° mission statement and association bylaws to find out how we serve the community.

Advanced steps

Regional communities

The English language is generally accepted as default language for communication, however there are regional communities developing around the world. These are administered by APOCs or AXIOM Community Points of Contact. Make contact with your local APOC and find out how your immediate community functions, if there are any events scheduled and if you can assist them in some way.

This is good for getting hands-on experience with the cameras, contributing towards film projects which happen to be using them, accessing equipment, or building your networks - the community is filled with a lot of very helpful and skilled people.

The above map marks countries which presently have an APOC. If there is no APOC administering on behalf of your local community then perhaps this is something you’d like to be considered for, in which case please make contact.

Raising awareness

The motto "Many hands make light work" is very much applicable to all aspects of AXIOM project development. If you don't code, shoot video or take photographs, and if you agree with the open source ethos or like what the project represents, there are still things you can do to assist. One important necessity is promotion. All of our current social accounts are listed here if following channels and sharing developments is something you'd like to help with.

Programming languages

We develop hardware with FPGAs for doing real-time video processing - Programming Language: HDL (VHDL or Verilog).
Our cameras run embedded Linux and there are some Kernel related development tasks - Programming Language: C.
Other tasks are related to creating a camera virtualisation in QEMU, webinterfaces for camera control, controlling lenses, drawing histograms/waveform/vectorscopes from the cameras live view data or automating the camera internal darkframe calibration. Programming Languages for tools: C/C++, Rust for scripting: Python and Bash, and for web-based applications: Javascript (React), HTML and C/C++.

Check out the source code on our GitHub repository.

apertus° community structure

Core Team: founders, longest term members and most active developers.
APOC: AXIOM Community Point of Contact. APOCs are regional representatives who liaise with users/contributors in specific countries around the world. Find your local APOC/community on the Wiki.
Team member: long term contributor.
Contributor: Anyone who actively contributed something to the project: software development, writing text, designing graphics, organizing an event, etc.
Follower: Anyone following our efforts through newsletter subscriptions, social media forum interaction or just checking the website from time to time.
Visitor: Anyone visiting the website.