  Modern radio interferometers such as the LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) are
capable of producing data at hundreds of gigabits to terabits per second. This
high data rate makes the analysis of radio data cumbersome and computationally
expensive. While high performance computing facilities exist for large national
and international facilities, that may not be the case for instruments operated
by a single institution or a small consortium. Data rates for next generation
radio telescopes are set to eclipse those currently in operation, hence local
processing of data will become all the more important. Here, we introduce the
REAL-time Transient Acquisition backend (REALTA), a computing backend at the
Irish LOFAR station (I-LOFAR) which facilitates the recording of data in near
real-time and post-processing. We also present first searches and scientific
results of a number of radio phenomena observed by I-LOFAR and REALTA,
including pulsars, fast radio bursts (FRBs), rotating radio transients (RRATs),
the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), Jupiter, and the Sun.
