What do you get when you charge a thermal camera, a software-defined radio key, and a battery on a Raspberry Pi?If you’re [saveitforparts], you create a tricorder to detect radio signals and visualize heat signatures. He admits that the videos (see below) aren’t exactly “how-to,” but they’ll still give him some insights for his next compilation.
You can sense the frustration with some Linux configuration issues, but [saveitforparts] admits he isn’t a Linux or Raspberry Pi guru. Version 1 seemed to be a bit of a prototype, but version 2 is more polished. We still aren’t sure we’d see Spock carrying a case like that, but some 3D printing could spiff that right up.
Of course, a real tricorder is a McGuffin that does whatever the plot calls for. This one is a bit more practical, but it can monitor thermal and RF energy and could accommodate more sensors. This is a great example of a project that would have been very hard to do in the past but is much easier today. The availability of cheap computers and ready-made modules along with associated software open up many possibilities.
If you want to do your own Tricorder hacking you could take over a commercial model. Then again, there’s an official replica on its way that seems like it might have some similar features.
Technically (at least according to TV Tropes), a macguffin is something which is itself pretty useless.
Here’s the TV trope of a “jack-all-tradesman,” an “applied sandfly”: https://tvtropes. org/pmwiki/pmwiki. php/Main/EverythingSensor
I spend too much time on this site. . .
need spectrometer, sound recorder (for example hit the metal and get information)
Now we wait for CBS to issue the DMCA takedown to jealously guard their property.
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