The DECam DAQ System: lessons learned after one year of operations

The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) is a new 520 Mega Pixel CCD camera with a 3 square degree field of view built for the Dark Energy Survey (DES). DECam is mounted at the prime focus of the Blanco 4-m telescope at the Cerro-Tololo International Observatory (CTIO). DES is a 5-year, high precision, multi-bandpass, photometric survey of 5000 square degrees of the southern sky that started August 2013. In this paper we briefly review SISPI, the data acquisition and control system of the Dark Energy Camera and follow with a discussion of our experience with the system and the lessons learned after one year of survey operations.