GadgetSci MCAAn open-hardware, 4096-channel multichannel analyzer for gamma spectroscopy. Pocket-sized, battery-capable, and launching soon on Crowd Supply.
What it isGadgetSci MCA is a compact multichannel analyzer designed for real gamma spectroscopy work. It pairs with a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) detector, offers 4096 channels of resolution, includes a built-in SiPM bias supply, and weighs roughly 100 grams. It can run standalone on a USB power bank for days — no PC required — or connect to a computer for real-time spectrum visualization, parameter configuration, and data export through the included GUI. Both USB and UART interfaces are available for integration into custom systems.
The full hardware design and firmware will be released under open licenses at Crowd Supply campaign launch.
Why I built itI work in a research environment where we build gamma radiation detectors. To characterize them properly, we need high-quality data acquisition chains - and the institute has excellent ones. The problem is that those chains are always in use somewhere inside the facility, and buying one for personal or preliminary work is out of the question at institutional prices.
So the idea was simple: could I build a cheap, good-enough acquisition system for preliminary testing, to stop competing for time on the main instruments? The answer turned into this project, and then into a product.
GadgetSci MCA is aimed at researchers in the same situation, at educators who want a real spectroscopy tool for teaching, and at serious hobbyists who have outgrown sound-card MCAs but can't justify the price of commercial instruments.
How it worksA SiPM detector is biased by the onboard supply. Pulses pass through a low-noise front-end peak detector, get sampled by a fast ADC, and are processed in real time on an NXP i.MX RT1010 Cortex-M7 running at 500 MHz. The MCU handles pulse detection, peak reconstruction, energy extraction, and histogramming - all on-chip - and streams the live 4096-channel histogram over USB or UART.
The making-ofThis project is about two years old and went through a few revisions and a few more test boards, one vacation-day miniaturization spree, and one overheating crisis that forced a full re-architecture. I'll be publishing the full story in the Logs section of this project, one episode at a time, alongside live updates as the Crowd Supply campaign approaches.
→ Pre-launch on Crowd Supply — sign up to be notified when the campaign goes live.
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