Tricorder Design

A Tricorder design from Star Trek DS9/Voyager era.

I never much liked the Tricorder designs we see in Star Trek. They seemed to me like they could do many things (usually just from 1 or 2 button "presses") and yet they only had a tiny display, a couple buttons, and a bunch of flashing lights. It's hard to imagine how they could perform a variety of functions that quickly from the limited amount of inputs they have. But, for all I know, the 24th century tech design in the Trek world might be so efficient that they would actually work well even with so few inputs. But in either case, this is my design for a Tricorder with a much bigger display, and many more inputs.

The top portion of the Tricorder has a touch-sensitive display, four "soft-keys", Active Scan light, Signal Scan clarity (red bar), and Signal Strength (blue bar).

The bottom portion is a variable input section (the buttons will change depending on what function it is performing).

Currently, this Tricorder is set to scan for lifeforms. As you can see from the display, it has found a Vulcan 2.23 KM away.


Made in Adobe Illustrator and additional textures and highlights made in Photoshop.