Star Trek fans have long wished for a world where they could use
a single tool to take multi-faceted measurements of the
environment around them, but Dr. Peter Jansen is making it a
reality with The Tricorder Project. Started when he was a
graduate student at McMaster University, the Project consists of
Jansen designing, building, and then open-sourcing designs for
actual working Tricorders. The first model, dubbed the Tricorder
Mark 1, was a proof-of-concept that allowed Jansen to take
atmospheric, electromagnetic, and spatial measurements. He
followed that up with the more elaborate Mark 2, which runs
Linux, features twin OLED displays, and uses upgradeable sensor
boards for easy swapping. He is currently designing the next
iteration, the Mark 4 (plans for a Mark 3 were abandoned for
straying too far from the spirit of the project). He's trying to
keep the latest version as inexpensive as possible, hoping it
can be widely manufactured at a later date. Jansen's efforts
aren't the only recent example of the T