Engineer and maker Victor Barahona has constructed a compact gadget impressed by Star Trek’s well-known Tricorder household of multi-functional sensor-packed units: the Tinycorder.
“Tinycorder is a small multi-purpose machine that seeks to pay tribute to the legendary tricorder of the sci-fi collection Star Trek,” Barahona explains of his creation, in translation from the unique Spanish. “It consists of a number of sensors, in addition to a high-resolution and low-consumption display that permits us to make use of it as digital badge.”
The compact Tinycorder is an element badge, half sensing platform — and all impressed by Star Trek’s Tricorder. (📷: Victor Barahona)
Barahona’s machine is pushed by a Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C3 itself a compact host for an Espressif ESP32-C3 microcontroller — giving it a single 32-bit RISC-V core operating at as much as 160MHz, 400kB of static RAM (SRAM), 4MB of flash reminiscence, and each single-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 Low Vitality (BLE) radios with Bluetooth Mesh help. The display is a Sharp Reminiscence LCD, a low-power black-and-white show panel tprovides the next refresh fee than ePaper whereas drawing a lot much less energy than conventional LCDs.
Elsewhere are three push-button switches, used to regulate the gadget’s consumer interface and select from the three built-in sensors: an ams osram AS7341 11-channel spectral colour sensor, a Sensirion SCD40 photoacoustic carbon dioxide sensor, and a Bosh Sensortec BMP280 piezo-resistive temperature, humidity, and barometric stress sensor. To additional increase its capabilities, although maybe not fairly so far as the on-screen Tricorders that impressed the mission, there are two analog enter pins accessible on the entrance for exterior units.
The {hardware} is squeezed right into a two half 3D-printed case, measuring simply 75×85×10mm (round 2.95×3.34×0.39″) and weighing a light-weight 70g (round 0.15lbs). As you’d anticipate from a tool that doubles as a badge — full with a display displaying Barahona’s contact data, together with scannable QR Code — there’s additionally a mounting level for a lanyard on the prime of the case.
Extra particulars on the mission can be found, in Spanish, on GitHub; Barahona is planning to launch STL information for the case and supply code for the firmware below the reciprocal GNU Basic Public License 3, however had not but finished so on the time of writing.
