A compact, flexible, high channel count DAQ built from off-the-shelf components

Medium to large channel count detectors are usually faced with a few unattractive options for data acquisition (DAQ). Small to medium-sized TPC experiments, for example, are too small to justify the expense and development time of application specific integrated circuits (ASIC). Commercial rack mounted electronics are too bulky and expensive for large channel counts. The combination of commercial high-speed high-density FPGAs, ADCs, and small discrete components provides another option that scales to tens of thousands of channels and is only slightly larger than ASICs using off-the-shelf components. A working example of this alternative solution is presented.