Andrew S. Harmon

I have been working on some Augmented Reality projects for a museum tour giving robot recently.  I came up with an idea to make Black on Black retroflective vinyl decals for navigation.  These have the advantage of being visually unobtrusive in a museum environment.   They seem to work pretty well too, when using an IR camera with IR illumination they are by far the brightest things in the room (to the camera at least).

 I also think that for people placing qr codes near art pieces could greatly enhance the museum going experience.  Imagine being able to access a wealth of information about a painting and the artist while standing infront of the art piece far beyond the standard caption placed next to a painting.  Using a web enabled mobile telephone and Qr codes you could also find out information about other paintings you might like in the museum.  I think QR codes have a lot of promise for the museum environment.

Another project has been making a Multi touch display.  This could be used in conjunction with a mobile phone and qr codes to setup self guided tours in the museum or for taking a closer look at art pieces.

I have been very busy with school and work, but here are some of the projects I have been working on.  I will post some things on the multi touch and augmented reality stuff I have been working on soon.

So here are some projects I have been working on the last month or so.

Concrete Hexagon Speakers

5W white LED dissection

Hand Key duplicating

Titanium Anodizing

Vacuum System for Screen exposure unit

Replacing parts in expensive cars

While unpacking some boxes I found some of my old glass work from around 2002.  I decided I should take some pictures. Here they are.

Look it is shiny again!  and now it looks better than ever with its body color trim pieces! It will also handle and stop better with its new rear disk brakes and some new suspension parts.

Just compare to the pictures from earlier posts to see the difference.

I have been home for a couple weeks and I have been busy trying to get readjusted.  These are some pics of some of my jewelry that I had not taken pictures of.

I saw this Lamborghini LM002 while I was walking down the street….

It moves in any direction.  putting all the pieces together as tricky.

My pieces in the SUF art show and some shots from around Florence.

This last weekend I went to Cinque terra.  It was absolutely amazing!  We hiked between the 5 cities and enjoyed some sun on the beaches.  We stayed in Porto Venere which was nice because it was much quieter than the Cinque terra (mostly only italian tourists) but still very very beautiful and only a 30 min (beautiful) ferry ride away from the 5 cities.

We had an art show at fuji studios.  I really liked some of the silkscreened fabric patterns that people had made.

Silver Ampersand necklace with inlayed stone that I made.

Process:

1. Cut ampersand out of 1 mm silver sheet (save the pieces that compose the negative space)
2.  Solder rectangle and tiny negative space pieces to another 1 mm silver sheet.  (The surface tension of the solder wants to pull all of the pieces together which makes things difficult)
3.  Solder sheet to another 1 mm sheet.  
4.  Cut, file and sand to exact rectangular shape
5.  File top with round file for tube to lay in.
6.  Solder tube in groove on top.
7.  Crush stones
8.  Apply  glue and place stone fragments in one at a time like a puzzle.
9.  Wait 12 hours for glue to dry
10.  Sand stones to level of metal, go back and fill holes
11.  Sand and polish
12.  Mask stones with tape
13.  Sandblast then remove tape.

Oh, and there a lot of intermediate steps (like pickling for 10 min after every soldering). But I managed to do it all this week (about 12 hours). 

During the waiting parts I made a married metal button as a practice piece before I move on to silver.

And a couple other places.

Here are some shots of my honda civic that I have done some work on.  It is still a work in progress, but it already goes pretty quickly (250 hp in a 2000 lb car).  I built the engine and did lots of calculations for sizing everything (many spreadsheets and many hours welding and fitting). I am currently having the body fixed and I will be setting up the data acquisition system when I get back to the states.  (Parts I did not do myself, roll cage, new downpipe and exhaust, seat mounting, installation of the sleeves)

I went to Sicily and it snowed!  A lot too.  I was not exactly prepared for that so I was without a jacket and quite cold.  Night trains are also not cool.  But the way they got the train to the island was quite odd.  There was a train ferry.  Yes they put the train on a boat and took it across the sea.  You never even had to get out of the train cars (but trust me it is nice to get out and get some fresh air).  6 people in a 7′ x 5′ room is very cramped.  During the day it has 2 bench seats facing each other (three people per side).  At night 3 beds fold down on each side (6 beds total).  Between the loudness of the train, the cramped beds and the need to keep the window open while going 60 mph because of the heat you really don’t get much sleep.

We went to Corleone, Palermo, and a few other sites. I presented on the palace of Zisa.

Some miscellaneous pictures from florence and some things I have been making in my jewelry class.

So spring break was about 3 weeks ago, but I have been very busy with other school trips and classes and I have not had much time to update my blog.  I went to Barcelona and Paris with my friend Melissa.  We had a great time relaxing despite some exhausting traveling.  The museums were amazing but very large and quite overwhelming (I got lost in the louvre for about an hour, totally lost).  The picture on the left takes you to the album from Paris.  The picture on the right takes you to the album from Barcelona.

Here is an album showing my current room.  I started with a blank (empty) canvas, and this is what I have come up with (so far).

Wow, that is about all I can say about this weekend.  I am so exhausted, but I cant believe how much I traveled and did.  

Spent the night outside the pisa airport, walked 6 miles across london, saw some of the big sights in London, visited the design museum in london, ate fish and chips, made it back to the london airport (despite a closed underground station and a bus to the airport that never showed up), made it to milan on a standing room only train (I stood for half of it), drank grappa,  saw Metronomy in milan, took a train from Milan monday morning and still made it to class at 9 am (I was only 5 min late!).

Here are a few practice rings I made.