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How does Storyball know it has been thrown or shaken?
Storyball has motion sensors inside it and software that turns their readings into named movements — a throw, a catch, a shake, a spin, a twist, a tap, a roll. It recognises over a hundred distinct movements, and games are written against those names rather than against raw sensor data.
From wobble to word
The sensors report motion many times a second. On their own those numbers mean nothing to a game, so the ball's software matches the shape of the movement against the ones it knows and hands the game a word: thrown, caught, shaken, spun.
That is why a game can say "shake it until I tell you to stop" and actually mean it. It is also why the ball can tell a real throw from a child waving it around, which is the difference between a game and a toy that flashes when you move it.
What comes back out
Three things: sound, light and vibration. The sound is a full speaker rather than a beeper, so a story can be told. The light is used as a signal — the colour means something in the game. The buzz is what you feel when you have been caught, or have not jumped high enough.
Between them they are enough to run a game with no display at all. A child learns the vocabulary in about a minute and then stops thinking about it.
When it does not seem to be listening
Turn the ball on, disconnect it from Bluetooth entirely, and throw it in the air. It should flash white. Then try shaking, twisting, tapping and spinning it. If the gestures produce no colour at all, something is wrong and it is worth writing to us rather than persevering.
The app has a gesture tutorial in settings, which is also the fastest way to show a child what the ball is expecting.
Storyball is our answer to this
A screen-free ball that children have to move to play. The app is free and pairs it in about a minute.
Free. No account, no in-app purchases, nothing collected about your child.