94Fifty Freakishly Smart Sensor Basketballs

High Tech Basketball ( TeK-THinK)
Basketball is one of America’s favorite pastimes and is quickly growing in popularity around the world. The beauty of this sport is that you don’t need very much in the way of equipment to play your sport. All you need is a flat safe playing surface, some shoes and a basketball.
Now there is a high tech basketball that helps you with your game by recording everything that you do and how you do it.

The 94Fifty Smart Sensor Basketball looks and feels much like every other basketball on the outside but on the inside it is very different. The ball has multiple sensors inside that collect data from your game and send it to your smartphone.
Pretty cool I think.


 94Fifty: Freakishly Smart Sensor Basketballs:
InfoMotion Sports Technologies rocks the Digital Sports world with it’s 94Fifty motion sensor basketballs.

A Normal Ball That Gives You Advanced Training Whenever You Want It:

 

• Regulation size, weight, and spin indoor/outdoor Bluetooth enabled sensor basketball
• Downloadable app packed with ways to measure stuff that helps you to get better faster
• Wireless Qi charging pad

Features

• Instant feedback - shot by shot or every dribble
• 50 different head-to-head competition choices
• Skill-based leveling workouts that get more difficult as you improve
• QuickTrain shot analyzer for shot speed, shot arc, and backspin
• QuickTrain ball-handling for power dribbling, speed dribbling, and off-hand dribbling
• Stores workout and competition history for up to 4 players for 3 months
• Indoor/Outdoor synthetic leather cover
• Wireless recharging and up to 8 hours of battery life
• Up to 90 ft. range from hand held
• Men's and women's/youth sizes (You will be able to select the ball size once the project is funded) 

Four Apps Included with Ball 

There are four distinct functional areas within the base app you get with the ball, and all of them have a well-thought purpose. The App contains:

• Workout - to improve skills and motivate practice
• QuickTraining - to focus on specific areas of skill
• Compete - for head to head competition for up to 4 players
• Challenge - to interact with other players around the world. 

Workout

Workout mode gives you 50 challenges over 4 different levels for shooting and ball-handling. Track your history. Get better.

• Focus is on skill development for ball-handling and shooting.
• Timed, Pre-defined drills - Player performs at game speed while app measures specific skill metrics.
• Performance history - record personal bests for 3 months of each drill.
• Instant results and personal feedback.
• Uses leveling to motivate practice (4 levels from Playground to Pro).

QuickTraining

Quickly train your skills with instant coaching feedback for shot speed, shot arc, backspin, power dribbling and more.

• Free form - perform any drill you want and measure what you want.
• Instant results with no history - designed for quick muscle memory learning.
• Choose to measure shot speed, shot arc, backspin and dribble force for quick feedback on your priorities. 

Compete 

Compete head-to-head against anyone, anywhere. Up to 4 Players can be in a competition.

• Instant head-to-head competition, anywhere, anytime.
• Choose from over 40 drills to compete.
• Choose different ways to score your competition (most dribbles in 20 seconds, or most powerful dribble, or most accurate shooter with the fastest shot release).
• Instant scoreboards to see who wins.
• Running leaderboard for 4 players (to see who gets bragging rights)  History kept for three months. 

Challenge

Use Twitter to join competitions against anyone in the world.

• Uses Twitter to allow players to compete in real time from anywhere in the world. 
• Follow favorite players, watch for challenges, and compete against the world.  (Trash talk optional)

Why Put Sensors in a Ball?

We asked the same thing 5 years ago when we were working to determine how best to measure important elements of skill. It turns out that the ball is simply a receiver of force, and those forces are applied by the player.  It goes where the player tells it to go. By measuring all the forces put into or taken out of the ball, and the consistency at which the player can apply forces at game speed, we actually get an amazing picture of how well that player can perform under pressure. (And in some sports like basketball and soccer, there is always some kind of pressure)

The sensors inside are programmed to recognize and measure stuff we can't see with the human eye, but when we can measure that same stuff and display it for the player to see, we can quickly improve shooting and ball-handling skills, such as:

• Shooting accurately and quickly (Did you know that great shooters can shoot the ball after the catch in less than .75 seconds with great accuracy?)

• Shooting with ideal arc (Did you know an ideal shot has an entry angle between 42 and 48 degreesto the basket?)

• Shooting with proper release and backspin (Did you know that the ideal backspin generated on a shot is between 135 and 150 revolutions per minute?)  

• Dribbling with force/confidence (Did you know that great ballhandlers dribble with forces greater than  6 g’s with either hand?

• Dribbling with speed (Did you know that putting down 150 dribbles in less than 20 seconds puts you at the top limits of human hand speed?)

Players simply use the ball when they practice or to test for improvement, to compete with other players to see who has the best skills, or to focus on a specific weakness that is important.  But more about the App in a second.   A few final details about the ball: The range of the Bluetooth is up to 90 feet from the handheld, and the results are displayed instantly. You can see every dribble counted and get results after each shot.  It’s fast - about 100 millisecond speed from action to visual display. And it measures any forces applied to the ball - spin, acceleration, you name it. A full 360 degree view of the ball - and the player that moves it. The ball is going to give you data and feedback about your game that is smart, precise, and freakishly accurate.   Yeah, it's that good. 

How it Works:

To get started, you download an app to your phone or tablet and bounce the ball three or four times to connect it to the app - that's about it.  We have taken great care to make this a very easy and reliable process.
It can be used by a single player working on their game. By rec players trying to get an edge. By parents helping their kids improve.  By coaches and trainers developing skills.  Or by elite players wanting to get to the next level. If there is a goal to be achieved, this is the answer. 
The 94Fifty sensor basketball feels and weighs the same as any basketball. But embedded inside, the ball has an array of 6 sensors, a Bluetooth radio, and battery positioned in a holder engineered to minimize vibrations on the sensors and maximize ball performance. The entire ball is engineered to counterbalance the extra weight so you can’t feel it when you play. Oh yeah - it's also very rugged. We provide a 1 year warranty on the components as long as you don’t use it in the pool or fire it out of a cannon against a wall. Otherwise, its built for normal use. We use Qi wireless charging, so it comes with a small re-charging pad. Simply put the ball on the pad to add power. The battery can last up to 8 hours of normal use before you need to charge it again.

Risks and challenges:

This Kickstarter project was created to fund the final stages of testing, app certification, and production details of our first consumer focused products Our first product offers amazing tracking and instant sports science to basketball coaches and teams, but it is cost prohibitive for the individual player that requires the purchase of a dedicated laptop with specialized software. We have now reduced the computing power required by the laptop onto a small, 10 gram Bluetooth enabled chipset embedded in the ball that processes data and allows it to communicate instantly through a downloadable app on a smartphone device. The primary risk is production lead time and certifications. The parts acquisition for larger production runs requires long lead times - and that's just to get the parts. Then we need to get the completed sensor units into the ball. But the sooner we can start, the sooner we can get 94Fifty into your hands.