Progress on photon-counting intensified APS

We report on the progress of the activity, started one year ago, to obtain a photon counting, MCP-based detector, optimized for high count-rate. A new electronic board, hosting both the APS and the electronics processing unit, has been developed. The new architecture of the system, designed to drive the detector, to acquire the images and compute the photon event centers, is described in detail in this paper. We also report the functional tests carried out on the sub-parts of the detector along with a preliminary characterization of the system.