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A tricorder was an advanced multi-function hand held computing and scanning device used to gather, analyze , and record data , with many specialized abilities which made it an asset to crews aboard starships and space stations as well as on away missions . ( TOS : " The Naked Time ")

Captain Donald Varley compared "little piece of legend" from an archaeological dig at Denius III that was believed to be of Iconian origin. Varley's engineers examined the object, but were completely baffled by its technology , leaving Varley to ponder its purpose. He likened his understanding of it being comparable to "a caveman confronted by a tricorder." ( TNG : " Contagion ")

Data using "Mr. Tricorder"

"Mr. Tricorder" was a joke made by Data in 2371 , during an away mission aboard the Amargosa observatory following the installation of his emotion chip . He used a tricorder like a hand puppet and talked to Geordi La Forge . ( Star Trek Generations )

During B'Elanna Torres ' baby shower she weighed a gift in her hand that she had received from Tuvok before opening and noted that it " Feels heavy, " before she guessed, " Baby 's first tricorder? " Tuvok responded, that it was " not exactly ", and Torres opened it to find a pleenok . ( VOY : " Human Error ")

1.1 Capabilities
2 Components
4.1 See also
4.2.1 Real-world devices
4.3 External links

Operations [ ]

One could learn how to use a tricorder from a tricorder operations manual . ( VOY : " Phage ")

Tricorders maintained their own tricorder logs , but were often useful for recording entries in personal or official logs . ( VOY : " Phage "; Star Trek V: The Final Frontier , et al)

Capabilities [ ]

In the proper hands, a tricorder could be used or rigged to:

Detect a cloaking frequency . ( VOY : " Riddles ")
Emit a homing signal . ( VOY : " Initiations ")
Set up a multiphase pulse . ( TNG : " Attached ")
Explode (SNW: "Those Old Scientists" (emergency capabilities revealed only to Captain, CMO, and Chief Security Officer, TS-120 series, only.)

EM interference limited tricorder range to as little as one hundred meters . ( TNG : " Descent ") The jamming signal produced by the Jem'Hadar on AR-558 limited a tricorder's range to one hundred meters. ( DS9 : " The Siege of AR-558 ") Similarly, a planet 's atmospheric ionization jammed the transponders of tricorders, which rendered them useless. ( DS9 : " Heart of Stone ")

In 2375 , Commander Geordi La Forge modified a tricorder with one of Data 's actuation servos , but it only had an operational range of four meters. Star Trek: Insurrection

Components [ ]

Isodyne relay
Optronic relay
Scanner head
Bajoran tricorder
Jem'Hadar tricorder
Klingon tricorder
Romulan tricorder
Heavy duty tricorder
Psycho-tricorder
Medical tricorder
TR-560 Tricorder VI
TR-580 Tricorder VII
TR-590 Tricorder X
TR-590 Tricorder XI
TR-890 Tricorder XV
Trill medical tricorder
Vulcan tricorder

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ]

The original impetus for the introduction of the tricorder to Star Trek was outlined in a memo from Gene Roddenberry to Robert H. Justman , dated 14 April 1966 , stating with regard to the role of the Captain's Yeoman : "It has been suggested that she carry as part of her regular equipment... some sort of neat, over-the-shoulder recorder-electronic camera via which she can take log entries from the Captain at any time, make electronic moving photos of things, places, etc... it seems like it could also be a potentially popular toy item for female-type children." ( The Making of Star Trek , p.169)

As of its third revision, dated 17 April 1967 , the series' Writers/Directors' Guide (p. 19) described the device thusly:

" TRICORDER: A portable sensor-computer-recorder, about the size of a large rectangular handbag, carried by an over-the-shoulder strap. A remarkable miniaturized device, it can be used to analyze and keep records of almost any type of data on planet surfaces, plus sensing or identifying various objects. It can also give the age of an artifact, the composition of alien life, and so on. The tricorder can be carried by Uhura (as communications officer , she often maintains records of what is going on), by the female yeoman in a story, or by Mister Spock of course, as a portable scientific tool. It can also be identified as a ' medical tricorder ' and carried by Doctor McCoy . " ( Star Trek: The Original Series 365 , p. 026)

In the final draft script of TOS : " Miri ", a tricorder was used by Spock to ascertain that McCoy wasn't dead. In the final version of that episode, however, no device is used by Spock upon determining that conclusion.

According to Eileen Palestine , Geoffrey Mandel , Doug Drexler , and Anthony Fredrickson 's Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual (p. 150), the name "tricorder" was short for " tri -function re corder ."

The tricorders in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock were designed by Bill George . ( text commentary , Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Special Edition) DVD special features)

In the documentary Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier , Brannon Braga ironically states that, although he didn't know what tricorders do, " they were probably used a little too often. "

Recalling how the tricorders in Star Trek: Discovery were designed, Aaron Harberts described them as "super-important [...] key props" that "nobody wanted to really change." [1]

Real-world devices [ ]

TR-107 Tricorder Mark 1 Vital Technologies Marketing

The TR-107 Tricorder

The first "real-world" tricorder was developed by a Canadian company called Vital Technologies Corporation in 1996. [2] The scanner was called the TR-107 Mark 1 ; Vital Technologies sold 10,000 of them before going out of business in 1997. The TR-107 could scan EM radiation , temperature , and barometric pressure .

Many research laboratories are developing, or have developed, portable scientific analyzers. For example, in February 2007, researchers from Purdue University publicly announced their portable (briefcase-sized) DESI-based mass spectrometer, the Mini-10, which could be used to analyze compounds in ambient conditions without prior sample preparation. This was also announced as a "real-life tricorder" in later press releases. Truly hand-held devices, based on lab-on-a-chip systems, are also in development. These are typically more specialized than the Star Trek equivalent; however, it is believed that biomarker analysis will allow the development of a general-purpose medical instrument in the near future. ( citation needed • edit )

Sandia National Laboratories in the US is a major center for lab-on-a-chip research, and have developed many handheld instruments for biological or chemical analysis. In May 2008, researchers from Georgia Tech publicly announced their portable hand-held multi-spectral imaging device, which aids in the detection of the severity of an injury under the skin, including the presence of pressure ulcers, regardless of lighting conditions or skin pigmentation. The day after the announcement, technology websites including Inside Tech and The Future of Things began comparing this device to the Star Trek tricorder. ( citation needed • edit )

In October 2009, researchers from NASA showed their prototype for a device that detects deadly gases in the air; it contains a chip the size of a postage stamp connected to an iPhone. ( citation needed • edit )

A mobile medical imaging lab that operates using inexpensive mobile phones was demonstrated in 2009. ( citation needed • edit )

In April 2017, a seven-member, self-funded team took first place in the international Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition. Their entry consists of several parts that are used with a tablet. It exceeds the design goal by being able to help a layperson walk through the process of diagnosing thirty-four medical conditions. The tricorder is called DxtER (pronounced Dexter) and the team is looking forward to evaluation and testing by the US Food and Drug Administration. More information is here .

External links [ ]

Tricorder at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
Tricorder at Wikipedia

Coming soon – register your interest here

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Introducing a Fully Functional Star Trek Tricorder

Beaming in the Wand Company's latest Trek replica.

Designed to work just like the fantasy version imagineered in the 1960s, with more than a little help from some 21st century technology, a full-colour LCD displays information stored in the Tricorder along with dynamic data gathered by its sensors and audio recording function.

With a target retail price of $250 USD, Star Trek fans can now look forward to measuring the environment, scanning radio frequencies, recording audio, impressing their friends, and enjoying the fact that they’ll own perhaps the most sophisticated prop replica ever designed and manufactured. The Tricorder will be available in summer 2021 directly from The Wand Company Shop, the official Star Trek Shop, and other selected terrestrial retailers. If fans want to be the first to hear about product updates and pre-order availability, they should register their interest The Wand Company's online store .

An adult Gorn in EV suit stands face-to-face with Spock on the destroyed saucer of the U.S.S. Cayuga in 'Hegemony'

Building A Tricorder Prop Worthy Of Mr Spock

We’ve all been there. You want to assemble a proper Star Trek: The Original Series landing party prop set, but the TOS tricorders you can find on the market are little more than overpriced toys. Imagine the embarrassment of beaming down to Cestus III with a plastic tricorder. The Metrons wouldn’t have even bothered with the trial by combat with such a sorry showing.

To start, [Dean] stripped the tricorder down, separating all of the silver plastic parts and finding aluminum stock that was close enough to the desired dimensions. This ended up being .125″ plate for the sides, and .500″ bars for the horizontal dividers. To make the side panels he placed the original plastic parts over the aluminum, marked the mounting holes with a punch, and used the belt sander to shape them.

[Dean] then put in a more screen accurate Moire disc, and went as far as to get real watch crowns for the buttons (just like the prop used in the show). In a particularly bold move, he even drilled out the center of watch crowns to install plastic light pipes for LED illumination.

Last year we saw a build that crammed a Raspberry Pi into the same Diamond Select tricorder toy to excellent effect. Now somebody just needs to combine both projects and they’ll have the slickest tricorder in the Alpha Quadrant.

24 thoughts on “ Building A Tricorder Prop Worthy Of Mr Spock ”

Reminds me a bit of those old portable B/W TV sets.

Of course, think of when the original prop was built. We still had a B&W TV in our house when Star Trek originally aired and I had to negotiate time in front of the HUGE 21″ set in the living room just to get to watch Star Trek in color!

I also tell friends we had it really bad back then. I had to wade through 12 feet of shag carpet just to change the TV channel….

Was watching an early Dr Who episode the other day – which featured video conferencing – and the prop was clearly a piece of ply with a hole cut in it and a B&W telly behind (well, it may have been colour but the broadcast was B&W…).

“I had to wade through 12 feet of shag carpet”: Barefoot. And it was uphill both ways!

Trying not to step on the sleeping legos…

That still gives me nightmares.

Man I can remember, when I got home from Nam in 1971, I was stationed out at Fort Lewis Washington. We had to get an apartment off base, and found one out on South Tacoma Way, it was a rambling sort of apartment complex and we had to take a small one to begin with but when a larger apartment opened up, we moved to that. Our next door neighbor had a COLOR Television, all we had was an old lugable 12 inch, so when they invited us over to watch Star Trek, I was very excited. Man was I disappointed when Spock turned out not to be green! Pissed me off to no end because in my mind he had been green, like the little green men from Mars, that we all used to hear tales of. I have been thinking of building a mock tri-coder for my niece who is into ghost hunting and Star Trek. I have already made her a bunch of different “ghost detectors” the last most elaborate uses an Arduino and puts out an average EM radiation read over a two second period to keep the reading steady in high static electrical places. I am thinking of using an arduino with the modern programmable touch screen to add to the usability.

Nice, but will it do 12 parsecs? B^)

That’s exactly how long it is at the molecular level

Malicious meme mixing.

Or confirm that the author of this article was a Slackware packager in his not remembered youth?

How “well defined” are these iconic props exactly at this point in time? Meaning does the RPF or somewhere already basically have a list of where and what most of what these props were built from? At least the ones that are fairly easy to figure out anyway?

I imagine more than a few props have been lost over the years, but there are still original “hero” tricorder, communicator, and phaser props in personal collections and museums that have been studied meticulously by the community.

An excellent resource is: http://www.herocomm.com

You have to appreciate the immense amount of resources that go into exploring and documenting all of the details of one and only one iconic prop from TOS only.

2) We deal only with The Original Series (TOS) Star Trek classic black body flip-open communicator.

I’d just like to see a text from when they were planning the show tat outlines what a tricorder is supposed to do.

I know it got waved round on the show, but I’ve never seen clarity about what it was doing. It’s name suggests it’s a recorder, and actually that it records three things. We sort of see that in the one where they go back in time to the thirties on Earth. But most of the time they seem to be measuring something, but that’s always vague. We see someone recite the results, but we don’t really know what the gizmo is doing.

It would be so much easier to build a real one if we knew what it was supposed to do.

In terms of “what they can do” on the show, there are a considerable amount of things that the many various versions are able to perform.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Starfleet_tricorder

Here is another similar build log for the same TOS tricorder.

They “recently built up their first TOS tricorder using Carls frames, Joe’s shells, and Karl’s leather.”

http://discuss.fleetworkshop.org/t/the-building-of-a-tos-tricorder/113/1

Space , time, energy. Tri recorder. Massive database to work out the details of each and in timely relevance.

Zenith Transoceanic radio, that was a hot piece of tech then. Add a tiny TV to top it off. I bet the prop-maker or someone up said the TV had to look like contemporary boob tubes for the mask not the square corners display of the future and of film. Meters could look retro-future, but that boob tube. Either that or no imagination.

I found a cute palm sized TV with a tube, flatfaced, and phosphored to the corners. I turned it into a o’scope that’s self contained only one coil added to change it over. Even boob tubes got better before going.

Try the free developers app for Android, Sensor Kinetics. It shows in realtime all the sensors in your phone, closest to the real thing for meaningful readings. No static G forces but all else. Pull it out and show somebody your new “tricorder”, they will be impressed. Even if it’s just a phone, all the screen data is real.

On a semi related note, I’m waiting for someone to get a good picture of what’s under Star Lors’s thumb on the abilisk scanner (Mattel Football game) at the start of Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

I got the Mattel game console, an Arduino and TFT screen etc ready to go to build a functional replica, but just need that detail to get it right.

*Star Lord’s thumb.

Edit button!

… except that they didn’t use watch crowns for the buttons. Those are HO scale slot car wheels.

Gene, I know this is off-track but are you the Gene Turnbow that lived on Otsego street in the late 70’s, early 80’s?

Do you know which objects and items did they use when building the Tricorder for the series?

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A few weeks ago, company director Chris Barnardo released an initial statement about the tricorder replica’s long development time — the first comments about the project since last July’s announcements — promising more to come as the weeks and months ahead continue.

[You] have been patient, but now an update is long overdue. Work progresses well on the development as we overcome the challenges of creating an exact Tricorder replica that functions properly and is a worthy companion to our Phaser and Communicator. I know that you are going to have hundreds of questions and I hope that these emails, with news and tidbits of development chitchat, will answer most (if not all) of them, as we concentrate our efforts to get this Tricorder manufactured and into your hands. Remember that we are a very small team and are hugely grateful for your patience, so bear that in mind if we don’t have time to answer every question. We can assure you that, as fans ourselves, we are as desperate as you to see this wonderful version of the Tricorder working for fans around the world as soon as possible. I know that we have left you hanging, but I also know that you believe (rightly so) that this is because The Wand Company will not knowingly compromise on the details that make our Tricorder something that you will love, as we leave no stone unturned in our quest to make this the best ever functional replica, which is taking a bit more of our time and concentration that we had bargained for. Over the coming weeks, we are now at last ready to take you on a journey through space and time as, bit by bit, we unravel the steps we have taken to bring this iconic piece to life. So wherever you call home on this pandemic-ravaged planet of ours, I hope you will be able to sit back and enjoy the story as it unfolds.

As part of the first early-March update, Bernardo shared this CAD file illustrating the guts of the planned tricorder replica, teasing fans that it offers “a sneak preview of some of the details and functions” that the finished product will contain.

Following up on that promise for future updates, The Wand Company team shared a lengthy behind-the-scenes breakdown of how they’re utilizing the last remaining original Wah Chang -designed tricorder props from the Original Series — owned by Star Trek film and television series modelmaker Greg Jein, perhaps most famous for building the Enterprise- D and other classic Next Generation models.

Greg’s tricorder is one of the two originals that were made by the late, great, Wah Chang in June 1966, long before anyone knew how enduring Star Trek and his prop designs were to become… the one in Greg’s collection is the “Wah A-B” (so-called because parts of the original two “A” and “B” units were swapped around after Season 1).

Meeting in late 2019 (luckily, before the pandemic would have made such efforts a daunting challenge), Jein shared his original screen-used tricorder with the company for laser 3D scanning and other examination processes to serve as base reference material for The Wand Company’s efforts.

The 3D scanning of inanimate objects is more accurately performed with either a laser scanner or a “structured light” scanner. For the tricorder, we used a Hexagon Metrology system comprising a ROMER Absolute Arm with an RS3 laser scanning head. The arm is balanced to enable the operator to move the laser scanner smoothly around the subject, and contains seven precision encoders to keep track of the exact position of the scanning head. As reflective surfaces (such as metal and glass) do not scan well, before the scanning could start, the glossiest parts of this priceless prop were gently spray-coated with a scary-looking but, everyone was assured, totally harmless self-vanishing 3D-scanning spray. Greg oversaw this process to make sure that the prop wasn’t damaged. Under Greg’s patient and watchful eye, the laser scanner’s 65 mm long blade of red light ‘painted’ over the surface geometry of the tricorder, rapidly measuring the distance from the scanning head to the surface 4,600 times per line, plotting highly accurate positional coordinates that stitched together to build up a three-dimensional point cloud of the tricorder’s surface. On a nearby laptop, a 3D image seemed to appear out of thin air as more and more of the surface was scanned.

After checking with Greg that doing so would not damage the prop, Andrew opened the tricorder’s top and bottom doors to peer inside. As expected, the top compartment was almost completely lacking in internal features. Those details – the rack of “memory discs” and the circular moiré element – known now only from what can be seen in first season screencaps, are long gone. At some point in the summer of ’67 after the end of Season 1, the production team decided that they needed more tricorder props. The two original masterpieces were taken apart so that copies could be made and, in the process, the original props were damaged and eviscerated, with the original guts now lost forever. Opening the lower door revealed some slightly more interesting details, which Andrew has since been keen to include in our replica.

The 3D scan data is a fantastic resource for guiding our CAD modelling, but we also took as many physical measurements as possible. The measurements provide a good old-fashioned control reference and, equally importantly, handling these classic props always brings us closer to understanding the original designer’s intent. Studying these incredible items with our own hands and eyes helps us to bond with them and become immersed in their story, in a more powerful way than just watching a 3D scan emerge on a computer screen. The 30-micron (just over one-thousandth of an inch) accuracy of the 3D scan data is great for the overall geometry, but even finer resolution is needed to analyse the surface texture of the black Kydex material from which most of the tricorder’s body is made. We had already studied this material when developing our Star Trek Communicator replica, and had been generously loaned a piece of the original 1960s Kydex by HeroComm, which we had been able to scan with a Zygo 3D surface profiler which uses white-light interferometry to measure the surface undulations with an incredible 1-nanometer resolution (a strand of human DNA is 2.5 nanometers thick!).

However, to check the way that Wah Chang’s vacuum-forming process might have stretched the Kydex texture in different regions of the tricorder, we took a few silicone rubber impressions of the surface. For further reference, we weighed the tricorder and, of course, measured the geometry of the strap and its stitching

While there’s still no formal release date or pricing set for The Wand Company’s tricorder prop replica, Bernardo notes that there is still “quite a bit of the story to come” as the months ahead progress towards a reveal of the final product.

Last summer, the company said they were targeting a price point of around $250 USD — quite the bargain for such a replica, as anyone in the collecting arena will tell you — but as more specifics arrive about their final offering, you can be sure we’ll share them here.

If you’re interested in this classic Star Trek tricorder prop replica, you can register on The Wand Company’s website for more news on the project, and preorder availability, as things move closer to fruition.

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