Star Trek TOS Communicator from The Wand Company

Update -- after four days, I'm still continually blown away by this thing. I've been taking and making calls on a real communicator, man!!! WT ACTUAL F?!??!? How did this happen in my lifetime?????

Bit of a bait-and-switch, though. The 1,000,000 km range-to-starship feature they promised isn't being rolled out till 2260. I guess it's in beta till then. Stoopid Starfleet Apple Division. :p
 
Awsome. I've had mine about a month now, but I'm afraid I need to let it go as well as my wand co phaser too. Need the money I'm afraid
 

Yes, these are really fun!

Did you make any alterations to this Wand comm? I see the hubs don't look the same - black center on the left vs silver center on the right button. The speaker mesh looks slightly different, and the left jewel appears to be a bit different than the units I bought months ago.

Have there been any manufacturing changes I'm not aware of?

TOSfan1
 
21st century version of a 20th century tradition. My son and I made pancakes together, which is something of a Saturday Morning Ritual, but instead of having the radio on, WDHA played on my Bluetooth Star Trek Communicator Speaker via their web app.


I put the comm there for the picture. It was well away from the stove otherwise.


This what was playing when i took the picture: https://youtu.be/3W6mDUmPZ0Y

15039459_10210384469981758_7889838564034229441_o.jpg
 
Yes, these are really fun!

Did you make any alterations to this Wand comm? I see the hubs don't look the same - black center on the left vs silver center on the right button. The speaker mesh looks slightly different, and the left jewel appears to be a bit different than the units I bought months ago.

Have there been any manufacturing changes I'm not aware of?

TOSfan1
I did not, and I don't plan to. I like to think of these replicas as having their own identity in TOS replica lore, so I just want to leave them as they are.

As for changes -- I don't think so, and it's kind of a funny story. I was unable to stop the ThinkGeek order after all, but I was able to reroute it for pickup. So now I had two communicators! So, being the persnickety fella that I am, I took the ThinkGeek one out of its box and swapped in my original Best Buy one, and returned that to Best Buy to get my original purchase back. The ThinkGeek one was slightly better quality (the knobs were straight, whereas the BB one had bent knobs), and the lid was slightly darker gold!

The Best Buy one could best be described as a champaigne gold, while the ThinkGeek one I kept was a regular (darker) gold. To my eye, the darker gold looks more like brass, so I'm very happy with it.

I think the things you're pointing out are just production variances, probably within whatever tolerances they have specified in their protocols. One batch of clear gold powder coat might be slightly darker than another, so these 150 comms are slightly different from those 150 comms. That kind of thing.
 
Great news I hope they do the Tricorder as well

I had a lengthy discussion with Chris Bernardo about that very thing, he won't commit to whatever projects they are going to do in the future, but it might be a tri-corder. I gave him several ideas along those lines as a tri-corder is basically a recording device that records all kinds of different data, audio, video, health, even environmental data.

The latest iPhones have all of those features, the question would be what kind of operating system would be the best to use? Android is probably the most accessible operating system with a little bit of tweaking they could probably create a next generation style tricorder very easily- but it is not very stable compared to apples' iOS: but the problem with that is they would never give permission to use it, alter it for theming, plus it is heavily secured so it can't be installed on anything but an apple device. Maybe they can hire a programmer to create something, but whenever they design these things they have to figure out how much it's going to cost on top of what people want in the actual thing. They wanted to make the communicator into a working phone, but it was oractically impossible due to size limitations, VLSI and micro miniaturization aren't quite there yet. But as a Bluetooth handset extension it works just fine for both android and iOS.

But the original tri-corder, I remember looking at the original schematics from the making of Star Trek book, for the original tri-corder to do the same thing there would have to be some controls, maybe an input for external devices and a hidden HDMI access port. You could probably create it as a data storage device that could hold several terabytes if you used SSD media. But there would have to be high quality recording interfaces for digital audio and video as well as health and environment sensors. There is actually an iPhone and android app that creates a tri-corder interface that connects to some dongles that detect environmental and health factors, but there are several dongle's and they are all very expensive, so you would have to figure out a way of putting these all into the tri-corder assembly. And of course using Bluetooth be able to connect the communicator to it.

Anyway people should send suggestions to him because he listens to everything and responds to every email.
 
Ugh. Moire stopped working when I key the sounds and voice samples. It only spins now when I open the lid. I've reached out to TWC support. So sad... :cry
 
Ugh. Moire stopped working when I key the sounds and voice samples. It only spins now when I open the lid. I've reached out to TWC support. So sad... :cry

Interesting it will still spin, almost sounds like a software glitch. Pull the battery connector loose and let it reset perhaps?
 
Sorry to hear that, they shipped my new unit very fast if that is any consolation


Ugh. Moire stopped working when I key the sounds and voice samples. It only spins now when I open the lid. I've reached out to TWC support. So sad... :cry
 
I like that they send out a replacement without making you send in the original first and that they pay for the shipping. This is what customer service should be like all of the time.
I totally agree. I just got an email telling me that the replacement had shipped along with a padded return envelope, with very clear instructions on how to ship it back to them in Essex, an estimate of what the shipping would cost, and a promise to refund the full amount of shipping via PayPal.

So refreshing to deal with customer service like this! They're absolutely keeping me as a customer. :)
 

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