I moved to Hawaii at the age of one and grew up in Hilo where I graduated from Waiakea High. I am currently a Computer Science Major at Northwestern University with my interests lying in machine learning and software development. After I graduate, I hope to pursue a master’s degree in Computer Science. Some of my hobbies are cooking, playing video games, and reading novels.
Home Island: Big Island
High School: Waiakea High
Institution when accepted: Northwestern University
Akamai Project: Improving the Subaru Telescope Alarm System’s Graphical Interface
Project Site: Subaru Telescope
Mentor: Russell Kackley
Project Abstract:
The Subaru Telescope alarm system notifies telescope operators of situations that could be hazardous to the telescope or routine operation. The original alarm system showed active alarms and past alarms but had no method for operators to access alarms that were inactive or hidden. This restricted the alarm information that could be used by operators. This project aimed to create a new interface in the existing GUI that would allow telescope operators to access any alarm at all times. To make this interface, we created a new back-end application to process alarm configuration data with a GUI built around it to accept user commands. Both the back-end application and the GUI were written using Python and the PyQt4 library, a framework for developing applications and GUI’s. The application processes through the alarm system’s YAML configuration files to build a complete list of alarms and the GUI then displays the alarms. The alarms are organized by category in a tree view and are shown with configuration information such as possible severity levels and threshold values. Using the new interface, we also implemented new features for the alarm system including a ‘snooze’ function that allows operators to ignore minor alarms for a selected duration of time. Telescope operators can now access alarms that were inactive or hidden in the original GUI. In the future, the new interface can be used to add further features from editing alarm configurations directly through the GUI to viewing statistics on individual alarms.