Idea: A device the size of soda can that records everything. It would capture the same types of data than a smartphone, including video, sound, barometric pressure, humidity, temperature, gravity and tilt, but also more unusual data. This includes infrared video, the full radio frequency spectrum, ionizing radiation, the magnetic field, LiDAR and ultrasound. It may even run mass spectrometry.
The Everything Recorder could be placed wherever and whenever we expect something interesting to happen, but aren’t clear what. It could be programmed to record continuously if data storage and transmission allow, or it could be triggered by events like vibration or movement.
The Everything Recorder could flag interesting physics that would be missed when only considering conventional data like video. Just like the ubiquity of smartphones has led to a lot of interesting data being recorded that wouldn’t be available otherwise, relatively cheap Everything Sensors could enable studies that wouldn’t be feasible otherwise.
They could serve as a black boxes in dangerous situations. In military conflicts, they could record enemy actions that may either be physical, chemical or electronic, or a combination of all three. They could serve as alarm systems in high-stakes situations where the type of attack to be expected is unknown. Radiation-toughened Everything Recorders built to last and with a wide dynamic sensor range could be placed in different locations in the solar system, waiting for interesting events like a meteorite impact or the passing of an extrasolar object.
Nehaveigur 