Building a Real-World Tricorder
The Omni-corder is a DIY handheld lab that measures radiation, air quality, and much more, turning Star Trek's Tricorders into a reality.
A modern smartphone may be able to do a lot of things, but it’s got nothing on a Tricorder from Star Trek. While your phone can snap high-res photos, navigate via GPS, and order a pizza, it still can’t instantly scan a strange biological lifeform to determine its chemical composition, detect subspace anomalies, or provide a real-time medical diagnosis with a little wave of a handheld device.
Motley’s Omni-corder can’t do any of these things either; however, this handheld device can do a number of things that a phone cannot. More importantly, it looks an awful lot like a Tricorder from Star Trek: The Next Generation. So if you’ve always wanted your own Tricorder, recreating this project is one way to kinda-sorta get your hands on one.
The Omni-corder is a fully functional handheld scientific instrument packed with an impressive array of sensors and computing power. Rather than attempting to build a cosplay prop, Motley designed the device as a real-world field scanner capable of collecting environmental, geological, and visual data. The project centers on a modular architecture powered by multiple microcontrollers and a dense suite of sensors normally found across several specialized devices.
The Omni-corder includes a portable radiation spectrometer called the Radiacode 110. This sensor detects beta and gamma radiation while also performing isotope identification through gamma spectroscopy. In addition to measuring radiation levels, the device can display full gamma spectra and identify potential sources based on their spectral signatures.
To complement the radiation detection capabilities, the Omni-corder includes a wide range of environmental monitoring tools. Sensors measure temperature, humidity, air pressure, and volatile organic compounds to estimate air quality. Additional modules detect UV levels, ambient light intensity, and electromagnetic fields. The device also integrates a multi-constellation GPS receiver capable of tracking signals from several satellite networks simultaneously, enabling precise positioning and track logging.
The hardware platform supporting these features is unusually complex for a handheld DIY device. The Omni-corder uses multiple ESP32-S3 microcontrollers to divide workloads across subsystems. One board manages sensors and communication with the radiation detector, while another handles the graphical interface and storage duties. This distributed approach allows the device to maintain smooth display performance while processing large streams of sensor data.
The Omni-corder also ventures into 3D scanning and imaging. A time-of-flight depth sensor generates an 8×8 depth map that can be swept across an object to build a three-dimensional point cloud. Images captured by onboard cameras can then be projected onto that geometry to create textured models. Thermal imaging is also supported through a 32×24 infrared array capable of mapping temperature distributions across objects or surfaces.
The device is something that sits somewhere between a scientific instrument, a portable lab, and a love letter to one of science fiction’s most iconic gadgets. While it may not detect alien life or subspace anomalies, the Omni-corder shows just how close modern hardware can come to turning sci-fi inspiration into real-world tools.
R&D, creativity, and building the next big thing you never knew you wanted are my specialties.