RSEConUK 2019

As a second year computing apprentice at STFC, I was lucky enough to work in the Technology department for six months, aiding work for the Large Pixel Detector (LPD). This is a high-tech X-ray detector used in XFEL. Part of my time in the team was spent working with members of the group who build hardware for LPD and its supermodules which of require testing before they can be sent out for use. Beforehand, the testing of the tiles (that are part of the supermodules, of which there are sixteen) was done manually with the results stored using Snipping Tool and a SharePoint database – something best avoided for hours upon hours if you wish to stay sane. I used a Jupyter Notebook and some Python libraries to semi-automate this testing and compile the results into a useful UI output that contains all the information needed. I managed to implement creation of PDF files of the output. This talk will explain the project and how I went about developing it (from working with the end users to make something useful to them, to spending time evolving the code and some of the barriers I needed to overcome in order to make the project what it is today.