  EPECUR experimental setup is aimed at the search of narrow resonant states by
precision measurement of differential and total reaction cross sections of
pion-nucleon interaction with 1 MeV pion energy steps. In five years passed
from the idea of the experiment till the start of the data taking in April of
2009, a new apparatus was build from scratch at the universal beam line 322 of
ITEP proton synchrotron U-10. The setup is essentially a non-magnetic
spectrometer with a liquid hydrogen target based on the large aperture drift
chambers with hexagonal structure. The unique properties of the beam line allow
individual pion momentum measurement with the accuracy better than 0.1%. The
momentum tagging is done with 1 mm pitch proportional chambers located in the
first focus of the beam line. The design of numerous subsystems of the setup is
based on modern electronic components including microprocessors and FPGA. All
the subsystems are tuned and tested both individually and as parts of the whole
working setup. The distributed data acquisition system uses widely spread USB
and Ethernet protocols, which allows to achieve high performance and take full
advantage of the industrial solutions.
