# The Wand Company TOS Tricorder.



## mach7 (Mar 25, 2002)

They announced that they will be selling a "Fully functional" Star Trek TOS Tricorder.

It's not a kit, but I thought some here might be interested.

You can sign up here for pre-registration:






Star Trek Tricorder registration form | The Wand Company







www.thewandcompany.com





It looks like the price will be $250. A bit high, but they do say it will have "Functionality".
3D scanned from one of the "hero" tricorders used on the show. I would guess Greg Jien's.




__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=678201656371586



It will go nice with my Wand Comm and Phaser.

Of course it is announced a week after I finally finish my tric build!


----------



## alpink (Aug 22, 2010)

hmmm, what can "functional" mean?
images appear on the screen?
lights flash on and off?
it vibrates and hums?
perspiring minds want to know!


----------



## Captain Han Solo (Apr 5, 2002)

Already did! Although I have the Master Replicas Tricorder, for $250.00 this one is a steal! I have their Phaser and Communicator. Also the first season Phaser 1 (and rock) Beautiful stuff. Now they finish up the landing party set. Now is the time to pre order this. Before it gets stupid on Ebay.

I couldn't care less what it "does". It's super accurate to the prop and again for $250, it's a bargain.


----------



## mach7 (Mar 25, 2002)

You beat me! I'm TC-37892!

The pre orders seem to be popular. Of course there is no money down or actual commitment.

The web site says it will 

"Our Tricorder is designed to work just like the fantasy version imagineered by _The Original Series_ script writers in the 1960s, with more than a little help from some 21st century technology. A full-colour LCD displays information stored in the Tricorder along with dynamic data gathered by its sensors and audio recording function. More details of the functionality will be revealed later this year – register your interest on the form above to be kept updated."

And:

Measure the environment, scan radio frequencies, record audio, impress all your friends, enjoy seeing your dearest Star Trek wish come true and love the fact that you own perhaps the most sophisticated prop replica ever designed and manufactured.

I'm guessing it will play radio, connect to wi-fi and blu-tooth devices, take ambient temp, possibly take body temp,
record sound and video, playback sound/video files, act as a digital assistant. Oh and look really cool while making very nice noises!


----------



## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

I do wonder what 'fully functional' means. I doubt it will scan for various minerals and radiation emissions. 

Mind, that would be a wicked TV remote...

I voted that it was too much simply because of my money situation. The price seems not out of line for what it claims. 

Thanks for posting about this BTW. The death of Thinkgeek has limited my learning of this sort of thing. 

Yeah I would buy it if I could. I'm Trekgeek enough.


----------



## FlyingBrickyard (Dec 21, 2011)

My inclination was to respond "Hell yes!" to the poll, but due to the current unpleasantness and loss of employment that has resulted, I put myself down for "Maybe". It's not so much the price of it that determined that response as it is the timing. $250 seems reasonable for what it is, especially considering their TOS communicator.

Hopefully I'll be back to building airplanes by the time it comes out. Excited to see this either way.


----------



## mach7 (Mar 25, 2002)

FlyingBrickyard, I understand completely. 
I work for an airline, If things don't improve soon it could get interesting. Not in a good way.

Is it too early to start the conjecture about what the functionality will be?

The easy stuff:

am/fm receiver
Audio recorder
Basic CPU
Wifi/blutooth 
Temperature readout
MP3 player
Video player


Cool additional stuff it could:
Atmospheric pressure
Body temp scanner, either internal or with an external scanner
grab data from a apple watch/oura ring/fitbit. Heart rate, metabolic data, sleep data, general health data. 
Pair to your smart phone.
Downlink google earth satellite images of current location, give map directions.
display star information, like the skyview app.
record video/stills through a cell phone camera

The impossible:

Detect life forms
detect/analyze energy fields
scan for di-choronium/ di lithium crystals or other elements/minerals


It just occurred to me that the next thing WAND makes should be a universal translator with built in cellular data/ internal data base that can be used to translate one language into another in real time!


----------



## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

I think one could use a combo of i/r, u/v (these both active and passive) and motion detection/sonic rangefinding to fake up a kind of lifeform sensor.

You know, the one thing that always bothered is is the lack of an obvious detector/sensor suite on the device. Yes it's sleek and beautiful but it would be nice to know where the sensors are so as to be able to point them in the correct direction, right?

I know Spock usually pointed the screen at things, and the Franz Joseph tech manual (oh sooo wrong about so many many things but man that's all we had back in the '70s!  ) claimed that sensor elements resided behind the 'speaker' space. Others using a Tricorder stared at the screen and vaguely waved the bottom of the thing around. 

I kinda hope they don't load the 'back' of the flip-up hood with camera lens, microphone and so on.


----------



## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

Unless I lose my job, this is a no-brainer. $250 is CHEAP. Loved their phaser despite the slightly too small power pack/grip. I didn't get their communicator since I already had two very good repros with sound effects but this is too cool to pass up.


----------



## mach7 (Mar 25, 2002)

I'm guessing that the final price of the Tricorder will come in bellow $300, $299 is my guess.

If it follows the trend set by the Phaser and Communicator, most will sell fast at full price. Then the sales will drop and they will start being discounted. But The Wand Co. has only done one run of the Phaser and Comm, the eBay price of them now is getting very high. When they are gone, They are gone. I would not expect a second run of any of the TOS stuff. 

I timed the Phaser well and got mine for $100 shipped, I paid full price for the Communicator, as I plan to do for the Tricorder.


----------



## mach7 (Mar 25, 2002)

PerfesserCoffee said:


> Unless I lose my job, this is a no-brainer. $250 is CHEAP. Loved their phaser despite the slightly too small power pack/grip. I didn't get their communicator since I already had two very good repros with sound effects but this is too cool to pass up.



I almost didn't get the communicator as I have the John Long comm. But I love my Wand comm. It has very nice hand feel and looks great!

The same for the mood light phaser/rock. I resisted, but finally bought it and love it!


----------



## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

The Wand Company is very foolish if they don't reissue their Phaser and Communicator. The Tricorder will reawaken a spark of interest I'm sure. The big problem is public awareness. Thinkgeek was the perfect retailer for their products, Gamestop just does not give a crap.

If The Wand Company makes a statement about 'not wanting to hurt the resale value' of their products then they are complete idiots. What does the resale value mean to them? Nothing. Less than nothing. They don't see a penny of the $1000 someone wants for their Phaser. 

Ahhhh, I'm grumpy today.


----------



## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

Steve H said:


> The Wand Company is very foolish if they don't reissue their Phaser and Communicator. The Tricorder will reawaken a spark of interest I'm sure. The big problem is public awareness. Thinkgeek was the perfect retailer for their products, Gamestop just does not give a crap.
> 
> If The Wand Company makes a statement about 'not wanting to hurt the resale value' of their products then they are complete idiots. What does the resale value mean to them? Nothing. Less than nothing. They don't see a penny of the $1000 someone wants for their Phaser.
> 
> Ahhhh, I'm grumpy today.


Great idea! I hope they follow up with that.


----------



## FlyingBrickyard (Dec 21, 2011)

PerfesserCoffee said:


> Unless I lose my job, this is a no-brainer. $250 is CHEAP. Loved their phaser despite the slightly too small power pack/grip. I didn't get their communicator since I already had two very good repros with sound effects but this is too cool to pass up.


What surprised me about the communicator is that it sounded better than the last phone I had paired with it. It was also kind of fun to have the phone in the other room, yet still be able to take calls via the communicator - especially since it played the correct "hailing sound" for any incoming calls.


----------



## alpink (Aug 22, 2010)

what WILL they think of next?


----------



## mach7 (Mar 25, 2002)

Steve H said:


> The Wand Company is very foolish if they don't reissue their Phaser and Communicator. The Tricorder will reawaken a spark of interest I'm sure. The big problem is public awareness. Thinkgeek was the perfect retailer for their products, Gamestop just does not give a crap.
> 
> If The Wand Company makes a statement about 'not wanting to hurt the resale value' of their products then they are complete idiots. What does the resale value mean to them? Nothing. Less than nothing. They don't see a penny of the $1000 someone wants for their Phaser.
> 
> Ahhhh, I'm grumpy today.


I have to say that I have never heard The Wand Co say they care about the resale value of their products, but I don't follow them that closely. 

My impression is that The Wand Co is not a large organization. The production is all in China. It might not be financially possible for them to produce more than 1 Trek Item at a time. 
I checked over at the Trek Prop Zone and they did do more than one run of the Phaser and the communicator, but they did not overlap. They probably have a very good idea of the market, and produce accordingly.


----------



## mach7 (Mar 25, 2002)

The Wand co recently had some photo's of the proposed tricorder up on their web site. I guess they were put up in error and are now gone.

But I grabbed some of the photo's.




























Some expanding and we can get some idea of the functionality:



















And finally, it has a removable disc. Some have speculated that this disc will have "expansion"
capabilities for the tric.










Nothing from The Wand Co.

I have heard that the photo's are for licensee approval of final design/packaging.

This was up also:










Apparently test packaging.


----------



## The_Engineer (Dec 8, 2012)

Looking at what is on the screen and trying to figure out what it's suppose to do:

Compass / Temp / Audio Rec.
Acceleration / Pressure / EmField (?)
Humidity / FM Radio

Not sure what language is in that photo with all of the text, but using Google Translate some words come up in English. Would be interesting to have the whole thing translated.

<Edit> comes up as Latin and some of the first line - pain, carrots, hydrogen undergraduate developer. In any words....gibberish. Yeah, it's not like I had anything better to do.


----------



## Trek Ace (Jul 8, 2001)

EM Field. Electromagnetic Field.


----------



## Pygar (Feb 26, 2000)

That gibberish is a standard fill-in for text to come later, so you can see what the ad looks like.


----------



## mach7 (Mar 25, 2002)

Pygar said:


> That gibberish is a standard fill-in for text to come later, so you can see what the ad looks like.


Yes,
Sorry I meant to post that, but I got sidetracked.

I did what The_Engineer did and got the same results. Someone over at TPZ posted your explanation.

Thanks!

The only thing that I don't see that I wanted was bluetooth to connect to a smart wearable,
Like the Apple watch, Oura ring, Fitbit so it could display basic medical information.

Oh, and a GPS receiver with a mapping function...
But then The Wand wants to keep it at $250.


----------



## alensatemybuick (Sep 27, 2015)

Pygar said:


> That gibberish is a standard fill-in for text to come later, so you can see what the ad looks like.


Eed plebnista norkon forden perfectunun


----------



## LGFugate (Sep 11, 2000)

The jibberish is called "greeking" and is used to simulate the look of text in advertisements and prototype packaging.

Larry


----------



## The_Engineer (Dec 8, 2012)

mach7 said:


> Yes,
> Sorry I meant to post that, but I got sidetracked.
> 
> I did what The_Engineer did and got the same results. Someone over at TPZ posted your explanation.
> ...


One of the main factors is cost. The Wand can probably add a bunch of functions to their Tricorder but the cost would go up. The other thing is the Tricoder design, it's suppose to do all sorts of functions, however there's only 3 circle buttons and 3 lights! TOS Communicators were the same. I like how in the TOS movies, the new Tricorders had more controls and the TNG ones were more thought out. I always liked the 'look' of the TOS Tricorder but from a design stand point, it wasn't thought out. It should have had a keypad/control panel that flipped out in order to use various functions (like the TNG one).

I suppose The Wand could 'milk' it and do a Medical Tricorder with features that you described.


----------



## mach7 (Mar 25, 2002)

The name tricorder would seem to mean it had 3 functions.

We see Kirk giving his Captains log into it on at least 1 occasion, and Yeoman always had one.
So function one would be an audio/video recorder. Even though no camera is ever seen on it.

Spock uses it as a portable sensor device, that would be function two.

It also has some computing/processing power so laptop would be function three.

We never see any keypads on any TOS device, some computers do have many buttons that could perform
as a keypad. TOS uses voice data input almost exclusively.

From what I've seen in the photo's, The Wand Tric performs function one and two and we can infer that it
performs three also. To some extent at least.

As for a medical tricorder, I can see that being an "expansion pack" to the base tric.


----------



## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

I always figured there were unseen controls that came into view when the lower panel was pulled open. Could have been some more advanced input design implied.


----------

