MAPIC: Multichannel Analysis and Wireless DAQ for the APIC

The aim of this project was to add a multichannel analysis function to the APIC and perform wireless readout. The APIC employs a preamplifier and a pulse shaper in order to transform delta function pulses from detectors into semi-Gaussian pulses with a shaping time of either 25ns or 450ns. These can be sampled with a fast but expensive commercial MCA. To reliably sample peak amplitudes with a cheap ADC, we employed a pulse stretcher circuit and a Micropython MCU. The purpose of this combination was to stretch the APIC pulses to a few microseconds so that they could be sampled with one of the three 12 bit ADCs on the "Pyboard" which each had a maximum sampling frequency of 2.4MSPS. The Pyboard also contained an onboard Wi-Fi chip that we could use for wireless readout.