As an often-seen handheld gadget for scanning areas and recording information in the Star Trek universe, the Tricorder is naturally fodder for plenty of DIY modders and niche gizmo manufacturers. The Tricorder-style personal media players (PMPs) from Ameralis Grafx look about the best we’ve ever seen, mimicking the futuristic movie prop without rendering itself as a useless brick.
While it can’t really analyze metal samples or diagnose diseases, it does a bang-up job of pretending to, complete with an attractive display of blinking lights and plenty of electronic sounds. Even better, you can do it while grooving to your favorite songs from the Star Trek soundtrack (you’ll have to download those separately, though), so you can feel like you’re really in a different universe.
Based off Tricorder designs from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the music players come in six different models, namely X-Style, Medical, Borg, Marine, Workbee and Troi. As such, you can choose whichever style suits your particular Star Trek fantasy (as in, the character you imagine yourself as, every time you close your eyes and embrace your teddy bear at night).
Each PMP fits in a 2.8-inch display, 8GB of onboard storage and offers decent, though obviously underachieving, file support (MP3, MP4, AVI JPG, BMP, and WAV). Of course, the real stars here are the twelve different LCARS (Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) interface themes that each unit comes pre-loaded with, so you don’t have to get bored looking at the same light show over and over. You can also download more from the site as soon as they make new themes available.
Like any futuristic gadget from the present, it doesn’t really do anything much beyond that. Price varies depending on the model, starting from $349.
[PMP Tricorders via Gizmodo]