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Engineering Student Builds Functional Star Trek Tricorder

March 30, 2012 / beep beep beep (that was my tricorder's ugly detector going off), cool, good job, homemade, i am impress, instruments, make me one!, science, space, star tracks, star trax, star trek, the future is now, tools

functional-tricorder.jpg

Inb4 big deal, I built a quadcorder.

Peter Jensen went and built himself a functional Star Trek tricorder because he could. And if you could, why wouldn't you? I know, I'm being pretty deep for a guy curled up on the bathroom floor. Haha -- a pube!

The Tricorder Mark 1 is, for all practical purposes, nearly identical to the device that we see in Star Trek, with the possible exception of being unable to reliably distinguish a Klingon from a Romulan. It's a self-contained, portable sensor system that can measure ambient temperature, humidity, air pressure, magnetic fields, surface temperatures, colors, ambient light level, ambient polarization, acceleration, direction, distance (ultrasonically), and of course it has a GPS receiver.

I hope you know I'm being honest when I say I'm ready and willing to put that in my butt and smuggle it into space-prison should Spock ever find himself locked up. "When would that ever be necessary?" No clue, but like the Boy Scouts say, be prepared. "You're practicing right now, aren't you?" With a brick.

Hit the jump for a video demo of the future.

This is a real, working, Star Trek-style Tricorder [dvice]

Thanks to beebs, who doesn't care what the outside air pressure is provided it's not 'crushing'.

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There are Comments

  •  A device with full of interesting features and sensors.
    I think the student did an excellent work where even most of the experienced engineers would fail to catch-up such a good idea.  

  • Andy Smith

    Looks like tricorder - check
    Functions like tricorder - NOPE

  • fjordprefect

    But can it detect lifeforms? Every ten years or so I read about some guy who builds a "real tricorder" but they can never detect lifeforms or the stats of those lifeforms. Sorry, deal breaker. Call me in 2022.

  • That's good one and am an amazing invention as well. We can say its a height of engineering.

  • Theres a android app and its exactly the same he just ripped of the software

  • artilleryboy

    SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

  • BMan56

    So it's an iPhone.

    Even though he says it's linux, it almost looks like he just built a box around an iPhone on the bottom screen since it is displaying the iPhone keyboard...

  • Pretty amazing!

  • so cool

  • McfeelySmackup

    "is, for all practical purposes, nearly identical to the device that we see in Star Trek,"

    True, if you've never actually seen Star Trek, you might think that tricorders were used to measure ambient temperature.  I remember like it was yesterday, Episode 34 "Bring a Jacket, It's cold out", when Spock said "Captain, according to the tricorder, it's 52 degrees and 70% humidity, also your shirt is cyrillian blue"

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