{"id":523125,"date":"2026-07-03T10:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T10:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/523125\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T10:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T10:12:13","slug":"atlas-a-modern-tricorder-designed-to-survive-unforgiving-terrain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/523125\/","title":{"rendered":"ATLAS: a modern Tricorder designed to survive unforgiving terrain"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is pretty much a real-life Tricorder, like the one used by the Starfleet crew in Star Trek. But take a look under the hood, and you\u2019ll see that it\u2019s actually a powerful tool designed to help the user survive unforgiving terrain. And it\u2019s all running on RP2350<\/a>, our secure, high-performance microcontroller.<\/p>\n

ATLAS<\/a> (Advanced Tactical Laboratory and Analysis System) is a rugged handheld field tool designed for explorers, engineers, and anyone who needs real, actionable intelligence, not just sensor readings. With pro-grade sensors measuring radiation, CO\u2082, VOCs, temperature, humidity, light, sound, and magnetic fields, ATLAS gives you direct, plain-English warnings like \u201cSafe background radiation levels\u201d, \u201cLeave area now\u201d, or \u201cStorm incoming in 2 hours. 68% chance\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Integrated GPS means every reading, warning, and anomaly is geo-tagged and timestamped for complete field awareness. The on-board 5MP camera and Google Coral Mini AI enable instant identification of rocks, bugs, and plants without the need for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.<\/p>\n

ATLAS also delivers real-time, on-device weather forecasts and storm alerts, using its sensors to warn you about dangerous conditions as they happen. The data is even logged for later review.<\/p>\n

RP2350\u2019s power-lifting capabilities<\/p>\n

Maker Apollo Timbers<\/a> is an engineer who set out to build an\u00a0environmental, biological, and threat detection system in a single device. It took about a year to develop and runs on our RP2350 microcontrollers<\/a>: one RP2350A and one RP2350B, with their roles deliberately split.<\/p>\n

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RP2350B is the main brain, running the sensor stack responsible for environmental and weather monitoring, threat detection, and overall device coordination. Its higher pin count and memory capacity made it the right choice for the heavy I\/O load this build demands.<\/p>\n

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Elsewhere, an RP2350A runs a TMS5100-class linear predictive coding (LPC) speech synthesiser<\/a>, providing the voice ATLAS speaks with. Apollo tuned the vocabulary so that ATLAS\u2019s spoken words \u2014 numbers, status updates, alerts, and so on \u2014 sound the way they would coming from a Tricorder. As the maker explains: \u201cA 1978-lineage voice on your 2024 silicon, in a real device in 2026. It felt right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Massive sensor stack<\/p>\n

We\u2019re a British company, so we\u2019re largely averse to tooting our own horn. T\u2019would be crass. So instead, we\u2019ll subtly share this quote from the maker \u2014 the grandfather of the modern Tricorder, if you will \u2014 about how endlessly powerful our silicon is:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026the sensor stack is massive \u2014 IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), pressure, CO, CO\u2082, radiation, light, microphone, and more. ATLAS doesn\u2019t just collect data, it runs sensor fusion across the stack to understand where it is and what\u2019s happening around it, and warns the operator when something is going to hurt them. The two RP2350s powering the\u00a0ATLAS Command Module make all of that run\u2026 And frankly, the datasheet is readable, which is rarer than it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This compact handheld device has a number of possible applications, and its potential for monitoring human safety is\u00a0immeasurable. Take a look at more designs from Apollo Timbers\u2019 company, Second Robotics<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is pretty much a real-life Tricorder, like the one used by the Starfleet crew in Star Trek.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[239315,85,46,174334,125],"class_list":["post-523125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-environment-sensor","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-rp2350","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}