Modular crate electronics

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Modular crate electronics are a general type of electronics and support infrastructure commonly used for trigger electronics and data acquisition in particle detectors. These types of electronics are common in such detectors because all the electronic pathways are made by discrete physical cables connecting together logic blocks on the fronts of modules. This allows circuits to be designed, built, tested, and deployed very quickly (in days or weeks) as an experiment is being put together. Then the modules can all be removed and used again when the experiment is done.

A crate is a box (chassis) that mounts in an electronics rack with an opening in the front facing the user. There are rails on the top and bottom of the crate that extend from the open (user) end to the back end of the crate. The back end of the crate contains power and data connectors that modules connect to. Electronics modules slide into the crate along the rails and plug into the power/data connectors at the back. Modules have signal connectors, controls, and lights on their faceplate that are used to interact with other modules.

Some modules just draw power from the backplane connectors and have all of their data inputs and outputs on the front plate. Other modules take inputs or controls to and from the backplane or have their behavior controlled from the backplane. Some types of modules have active circuitry inside them, and act almost as small computers; others are not stateful at all and are only dumb single components.