A Star Trek: Voyager Fan Built a Replica Tricorder That’s Better Than Any Prop Hollywood Has Ever Made

Despite the present’s finale airing virtually 20 years ag,o the know-how in Star Trek: Voyager (and even TNG) nonetheless appears to be like convincingly futuristic, and we’d fortunately commerce our folding smartphones just like the Galaxy Z Fold 3 or the Surface Duo 2 for this incredible recreation of one in all Voyager’s tricorders.

Producing a sci-fi TV sequence based mostly on one of the crucial beloved franchises of all time isn’t low cost. You not solely must construct standing units recreating the inside of an enormous starship, there’s additionally alien worlds to assemble, a great deal of particular results, and mountains of futuristic props for the solid to work together with. According to Hackaday, For Star Trek: Voyager, the second follow-up to the wildly profitable Star Trek: The Next Generation, there have been plans to introduce an up to date design for the ever-present tricorder—a futuristic PDA that may do virtually something a script requires of it—however idea sketches have been changed with hand-me-down props from TNG to maintain prices down.

At least one Star Trek: Voyager fan felt that was an incredible injustice, however as an alternative of voicing their issues throughout a Q&A session at a Star Trek conference, they got down to construct the Voyager Tricorder, as they name it, in actual life. The first version that YouTuber Mangy_Dog (a UI designer who’s additionally expert at electronics) took over a year to build was impressively succesful and seemed straight out of the twenty fourth century. But when a pal commissioned a reproduction of the tricorder for themselves, Mangy_Dog took the chance to totally replace the prop inside and outside, and whereas it took a number of years to finish, the outcomes look even higher than something Hollywood has ever delivered.

Mangy_Dog has delved into the design and engineering course of behind the Voyager Tricord V2 construct in three movies. The first video goes into a number of the challenges of the {hardware} itself, together with customized PCBs and issues with sourcing high-quality shows, whereas the second video delves into the customized person interface and animations created for the prop, that are all generated and rendered on the fly, as an alternative of simply being pre-rendered movies performed again on queue. The third video goes a lot deeper into the interior {hardware} together with the customized PCB created for the mission and the intensive code that powers it.

In addition to LCD shows displaying what seem like Starfleet customary person interfaces, the Voyager Tricorder V2 contains numerous touch-sensitive buttons used to change modes or activate secret options after a protracted press. There’s additionally blinking, flashing, and pulsing LEDs everywhere in the system, making it appear like the tricorder is definitely scanning and interacting with its setting, when in actuality the one factor this duplicate tricorder can really do is make different Star Trek followers extremely envious.

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