I like the new case. It's a very neat, clean design. =)

 Is the magnetic reed switch there to be an option for the power switch used in the earlier designs?

In the v5 design there's a main power switch and a magnetic reed switch. V6 will have the same thing when I get it's new electronics soldered together.

Thank you for responding so quickly. Again, sorry for so many questions. But the assembly guide would answer these. I should have waited for that. You have been very gracious in your replies. I will ask this, as it won't be in the guide. Do you plan on selling these in kit form, or anything like that? Now I will have patience and await the assembly guide. 🙂

Not at this time. Maybe in the future, when I have my own PCBs designed but even then they'll take a good amount of soldering work to get operational.

I have a three questions, if you don't mind. In the picture of an up close view of the screen with the system in ATM Mode, what is Target A and D? Is there a B and C somewhere? The other question is, is there anything under the keyboard, other that wires?  I couldn't decide, from looking at all the pictures, but I am guessing not. The last is about the carbon fiber in the 3d printing. What are the qualities of that particular material? Is it wear resistant, holds up to impact, etc? Sorry to have so many questions. But I really want one of these. And I'm trying to understand it all, but I have zero skills in electronics.

ATM Target sensor A is an Average of the center 4 pixels of the GridEye sensor (an 8x8 thermal IR sensor), sensor D is the MLX90614, a Direct measurement.

Under the key panel is the Adafruit CAP1188, the wiring going from the Door assy to the main body is 2-wire 12c, an interrupt for the capacitive controller, +v and Gnd.

Carbon fiber PLA is, I'm assuming, the strongest material that my printer can work with in its current state. If I could print in ABS, Polycarbonate or other more resilient materials I probably would have gone with those.

I'll be doing another iterative chassis print and I think it's close to complete for this version. At that time I'll probobly do a write-up/guide covering assembly. The chassis is designed to be easy to assemble and doesn't require specific boards aside from the mainboard being a specific size and the capacitive breakout PCB (this could be changed too, with a bit of work). It'll likely require soldering work no matter what but the actual internals could be simplified a fair amount, at that point it'd just take minor soldering and changing the code.

So it won't be that heavy. That would be easy to skip into a backpack or pocket if needed.

If I remember, you said somewhere you were going to finalize the printed material in carbon fiber?

I'm going to print the final chassis assembly for the v6 unit with carbon fiber PETG or PLA, something like this:

https://www.matterhackers.com/store/l/3dxtech-carbonx-petg-3mm/sk/MKJ2V47R

I haven't used carbon fiber-filled print filament before but it should be fairly easy to tune my printer to work with it, I've already got an upgraded hotend and hardened nozzle installed.

Understood. I knew from looking at the pictures space is at a premium. And speaking for myself. I like the current clam shell style. I would use it as an EDC device, so the clan she'll would be protective without an extra case. That does bring up a question. What is the weight of the two models you have: the green metal one vs the 3D printed one?

The v5 Aluminum and ABS chassis one is 272g.

The v6 PLA-printed chassis is 190g but still missing some internals. This will be printed with different filament for the final build so maybe around 220g?

Would you need to make major changes to  the design to accommodate the other two? And would you need switch to a D-pad style of controller? I ask that because I'm not sure where you would add another button to the current design.

Physical space is always an issue in this design for the actual sensors. For the controls I do plan on moving away from the simple press-of-a-button mode switching to some semblance of a button-controlled UI but that's well down the line right now.

Would it be possible to use one of the sensors for lightening detection?

It's one that's been on the list of 'possible additions' I've had for a while now:

Lightning Flex Module (RF) - https://www.tindie.com/products/Fyberlabs/lightning-flex-module/
Magnetic Imaging Tile - 8x8 - https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14652
Adafruit Ultimate GPS Breakout - https://www.adafruit.com/product/746
Adafruit SGP30 Air Quality Sensor - https://www.adafruit.com/product/3709

The magnetic imaging tile is likely too much for this project in processing needs and physical size, and the GPS would likely be too large. The other two might work out later on though.

Thank you for your answers. Sorry for all the questions. 

No worries, I'm glad to answer questions about the project!

I like your design.  I am anxious to see your design come to completion. 

Is it possible to upgrade the sensors and software without starting over from the square one?

Upgrading should be fairly easy once a unit is completed. Since I'm currently designing the electronics around pre-made breakout boards for most components all that's needed to change/upgrade a sensor is to wire it in and update the Arduino code with what the new components need to do. Upgrading the Adafruit Feather also should be pretty easy as long as the microcontroller itself is the same, otherwise the pins would need to be updated and code changed to work properly. Some core components like the i2c multiplexer and clock will (eventually) be soldered to the mainboard whenever I can get my own PCBs designed.

Ok. It sounds like the 3d prints will be pretty good too. Like I said, for myself, this would be an EDC device. So durability would be important. But it sounds like that won't be too bad. And if the circuit board stayed in place from an approximate 1 meter drop, then that is half the battle.

I was thinking of this as an EDC item. So water resistance, or lack thereof, would be important. Another question is durability? Have you used one of your builds enough to know if that would be an issue?

The older aluminum/abs casing is pretty sturdy, it's been carried around for a couple years in the bottom of bags and dropped a meter or so a number of times and seems pretty resilient.

The 3d-printed casing I'm working on I don't really know yet. I'm doing my best to design it for strength (and will print it with carbon fiber+PLA for the final version) but can't test it yet.

Have you done anything to make the device water resistant?

Not yet, I could probably seal off most of the body and door assemblies but many of the sensors need unobstructed exterior access (or to figure out non-impeding glass shields). For now I'm going to harden the casing to make it fairly resilient but maybe at a later point I might look at sealing the design up.

I like the idea of averaging 3 temperature sensors.  How does that play out in practice?  Do they diverge alot?

It's usually pretty close to accurate from what I can tell, though letting the tricorder acclimatize for a bit is the best way for it's internal temp sensors to get an accurate average. When I need a quick check I usually use the non-contact IR temp sensor and point to something metal at about hip-level.

Did you know there is (or used to be) a project where people are challenged to build medical tricorders to detect / diagnose symptoms and deceases? ^_^ Quite a monetary incentive too, if I recall correctly..

Nice work. I've been messing around with ideas to build one myself, but mostly because I once got a medical tricorder prop somewhere in the past, and been meaning to extend it with actual hardware.

>detect / diagnose symptoms and deceases

As in "He's dead Jim"? 😉

I would like to build a medical tricorder at some point, but I don't trust my skills enough to use something for critical needs like anything medical, sadly...

Hahaha cute 👍. You also need to make one of those cylindrical flashers used by Bones for body scans. That one doesn't need to do anything but flash and make a woo woo sound.

I did make a hand scanner at one point, just some neopixels that were triggered by a cheap magnetometer:

https://ohicosplay.tumblr.com/post/161560143234/queadlunn-heres-something-i-put-together-today

Not bad! Unfortunately I was never able to finish my own one. I´m still not sure about the basic strategy how to build it. You´re using a µC with on board radio, that´s useful in the long term I think. I also thought of using only limited amount of sensors within the main unit which might give long runtime, small size and weight. Using LoRa etc. one could shift all heavy duty sensors out to accessorie units... 

Hah, cool Project ! I found it because of your comment on another tricorder build... ;-)

You really have a hell of a lot of sensors in tis package.

How Long can it rum from batteries?

The current version will run for about 3 hours on the 500mAh battery. The newer version will hopefully have a 700 mAh battery though which should make it run a bit longer.