Metal Powerball

[user]

I have trouble holding the normal one with sweaty hands so imagine what a metal one will be like! It would have to come with a bigger grip band that may spoil the 'coolness factor' as some have mentioned.

Matt Sellick

[user]

Blue tooth? you've got to be kidding don't you? I don't think this is really practical for 99.9% of users. Imagine what this would do to production costs and then selling price. The cap over the wheel is a fair point though.

Nathan

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An optional bluetooth counter is on the cards - watch this space...(the key word here being 'optional! :-)

[user]

bluetooth chips and near-field transmitters /rf tags are ridicilously cheap.. using bluetooth was just a suggestion but the fact remains is that its totally .. and i mean TOTALLY unpractical to have the counter UNDER your hand.. I mean if the counter didnt have a "live mode" showing the current RPM you want to use that and you just cant really do that properly if you have the risk of a frictionburn making a hole in your palm.. the faster the thing goes the harder you grip and the more flesh you "push" into the hole thats there..

It also wouldnt have to use induction.. you could simply have a strap with a clock type device strapped on your wrist or on top of your hand that would have the battery but a large enough emission/detection field to count the magnets in the gyro just below in your hand.. .. I do really not understand why the current timer HAS a "live counter" when its pretty much useless inside your hand...... neway such a device does not need to use induction to be powered and does not need to have batteries or even a counter on the powerball to function..

so.. optional or not.. we NEED a device like that but it could very well be sold as an optional counter.. but if its optional there should also be a replacement cap you can put instead of the current counter that would give the ball a bit of a smoother top surface.. that round hard thing in your palm isnt the most comfortable either at 10 000+ speeds cos you grip quite hard..

Anywya.. this can easily be developed later as all you really need is a emitter with a field large enough to count the gyro on the other side of your palm.. (i dont wanna wait decades tho ppl so.. )

Oh yea.. that cap on the bottom would be nice.. heh

oren..

[user]

you would need a hole in the top or bottom of a powerball otherwise the gyro would not turn....

the only reason there is a hole there is so it works altho it is a drawback for your hand when it gets burned but if your technique is right that should not happen

james

[user]

Yes, I can agree that a bottom cap will be very useful for some. My hands would wrap around a PB, and my fingertips will be pretty near the gyro, and it can prevent me from trying to go faster so as not to lose my grip and then a fingertip.

Also, how much air resistance does the PB gyro experience in its casing? I wonder if you had a bottom cap, that if you pumped some air out, would that help performance by much?

It would be neat to see how that would sound, probably even more high pitch in the low density air?

Calculon

[user]

Please hurry with the new metal powerball. I don't have the plastic powerball but I am thinking of getting one in about 3-5 weeks. I would much rather have the metal powerball first.
And you could put some sort or metal mesh or grate over the hole at the bottom of the metal powerball so air can still be pushed out or in but it would solve the problem of people getting their finger tips burnt.

David

[user]

A power source should be quite easy to find. First of all I would like to point out that I would not like to have some device which generates electricity from the rotor! This would inevitably slow the rotor down, and thus not allow you to bring it up to high speeds... However, the (plastic) Powerball has two small holes for a wristband, so why not have a third one with a power cable in it? The batteries could be in a small box on the wristband, so you don't have to worry about their size. Then you could have another device on your other wrist on which to read the score. (Allright, you could have the display on the wristband and then there is no need for bluetooth and all that, but this would also be quite difficult to read since you're jiggling your arm around quite a lot. The LCD has to be around the wrist without a Powerball in it!)

More ideas... well, now that we're at it, may be a USB device for the computer so that you can read things on a slightly bigger monitor. Here you could have a graph showing speed over time, save your records, have "30-second-challenges" with any number of seconds you want, automatic diagnostics, training programmes and advices, games controlled by the Powerball, COM-packages which allow you to program your own applications to use the Powerball, automatic error reporting, and the meaning of life. Thankyouverymuch.

Hymnly

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Thank you for these valued suggestions! Regards, Rory

[user]

well Rory I think you're taking it a bit too far with the USB stuff, dont make a mockery of good ideas by dedicated powerballers..

There is no doubt tho that some form of external sensor that could read its speed without being in a pair of very stressed hands would be extremely useful and its existence would remove the need for an endcap since there would be no reason to hold the powerball upside down anymore and the powerball itself wouldnt need to have any devices on it or batteries of any sort, all you would need is a transmitter on your hand that emits a field that the magnets in the gyro passes trough and thus measures its speed and it would carry the batteries and the power and not the powerball.

Its a very good idea, but can it be done?

eirik

[user]

Hi

Sorry for asking but it's hard to know how relevant the posts here are with no date stamp. I guess you guys get this all the time, but when will the metal version be out? And at around what price range will it be? I happen to have a cheap a copy (I didn't know how fun it would be and it was 2-3 times cheaper, sry :P) and I'm either to wait for the metal version or get a 250 hz pro.

I could wait a month, but I couldn't bare waiting half a year or so just to cough up 3-4 times as much as the none metal.

Max Metal

[user]

Hi there,

Being a Powerball fanatic as most of the guys here, I am also looking forward to the release of the Powerball metal. At this moment my record with the Powerball regular is 14102rpm. And man, I love that sound . And just imagine how 20000rpm would sound like .

Anyway, I have seen so many good suggestions in this thread that I am wondering which of those will be taken along in the first release. Rory, could you comment on that please?

Thanks in advance,

Steven van Dijk
31 years, The Netherlands