If you are seeing this message, it means that something has happened. Something unexpected. Maybe your tricorder is lost, damaged, or intercepted. Maybe we were never able to send back a tricorder device. This is our backup plan.
We were able to cobble together a mostly-functional tricorder using early 21st century parts1.
1: similar to what Data did in 18932
2: Time's Arrow parts 1 and 2, S05E26 & S06E01