Download this cool mpg of a tricorder in action
This prop was originally seen in one episode of Voyager, and not really for that long. There were a few blurry shots of it, but nothing really comprehensive. Word got out from a guy named Chronowerx that the body for this tricorder was actually a found item. Turns out that it's a clock made by a company named Oregon Scientific. You can usually find them online for about 20 bucks, though I understand that the exact model used for the tricorder is no longer in production.
Once we discovered what the body was, we set out to make graphics for it. A few of my friends and I all made separate efforts, and we figured we'd take the best. Fortunately for us, Paramount had one on display at the Hilton in Las Vegas. We had some friends who lived over there, so we sent them down to take some photos. The images we got back were good, but not great. Most of them were taken at angles, so I had to tweak the photos in photoshop to make them regular. I then traced them in Adobe Illustrator, filling in as many of the missing details as possible.
Here's where the story gets fun. Because I and my friends considered this a GROUP project, we would often post our progress on our graphics to the internet, so that we could all see them and critique them, in order to get the best possible graphics. Well, while we were doing this, a nefarious little asshole going by the name of Stompy Khur was following us around, gathering information on the tricorders. He promptly took our low quality, inaccurate jpgs that were posted to the internet and printed them out on a color printer, and started selling them on e-bay. Not only was I upset that he had lifted my graphics, but it also rubbed me the wrong way that he was selling such CRAPPY print outs of them. I guess it also bugged me that he was making a fortune, but oh well.
In the mean time, the REAL creator of the graphics caught wind of my bitching about someone stealing "MY" graphics, and he then got upset at me. Fair enough, I suppose. I suppose it must have struck him/her as a bit insulting that I was complaining about someone stealing something of mine, when I had in fact stolen it in the first place.
Anyhow, on with the story.
I then spent the better part of six months researching the best way to print these out for the tricorder. I purchased about 5 different printers, and returned them when they didn't print out high enough quality stuff. I finally found a good printer, and I still use it to this day.
In the mean time, on the other side of the country, another dude was working on electronics for the tricorder. We spent many months analyzing the few video clips of the tricorder to try to figure out exactly what the sequence of lights was, and also what their colors are.
To this date, there are probably about 6 different versions of the electronics. A batch would be made, then we would learn from a reliable source that the color of one LED was wrong, so it would be changed in the next release. Sometime later, a batch of tri color LEDs was found that were used in a special "True Blue" board that was the most impressive one of all. Someone else came out with a tricorder that had 2 scanning modes, so not to be outdone, one was made with 2 scanning modes. This is the tricorder featured in the photos.