Nice, welcome :D
The flipped preview happens because Aperture defaults to flipped when it doesn't know better (hard choice because it's wrong for some users either way) - and right now we can only detect the orientation for #libcamera devices with appropriate entries in the DT (which covers most #linuxmobile devices).
Your camera is exposed as simple v4l2 camera right? Trying to think about a good way to set the orientation there.