How to make your own tricorder
Take one part open-source code, two parts OLED
display, mix in a generous helping of curiosity and serve with a side of
extra-delicious geekiness. That’s your basic recipe for a real-life tricorder,
as envisioned and modeled by Dr. Peter Jansen. The result is a handheld
device with sensors for reading atmospheric, electromagnetic and
spacial properties in the surrounding environment. Dr. Jansen’s
tricorder won’t necessarily detect alien life-forms, but there’s plenty
of room to expand on his open-source design. Your mileage may vary.
Dr. Jansen’s Tricorder Project
is a self-professed labor of love. In his spare time, Jansen built his
first tricorder, the Science Tricorder Mark 1, with a goal of bringing
to life “phenomena that we can’t normally see.” These include things
like the release of particles from a car’s exhaust pipe, or the process
of photosynthesis in a single leaf from a neighbor’s tree. With
measurements showing the presence of pollution or chlorophyll, Jansen
believed the Mark 1 could tell a great deal about the world around him,
and maybe get other people excited about environmental learning too.
The Mark 1 quickly led to the Mark 2, and as Jansen
continues to innovate on his original concept, he hopes others will
join his quest of discovery. Anyone can download Jansen’s open-source
tricorder plans and build their own prototypes. Jansen himself is at
work on Mark 4. He apparently wasn’t happy with version three of his
device and has moved on to the next model.
Tricorders, meanwhile, are a popular hobby these days. The X Prize Foundation launched a contest
earlier this year asking innovators to design tricorders with health
diagnostic capabilities. The winning team will get a $10 million prize.
You can imagine the implications of putting
tricorders into daily use around the world. Beyond individual discovery,
there is also the possibility of collecting mass data for analysis.
Combine tricorders with web connectivity, and you have a new layer of
information for mapping the world in real time. That’s boldly going
where no man has gone before.
