Tag Archives: tennis ball

Winbeldon 2022 tennis balls get a new life as Bluetooth speakers

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One of my sporting-related dreams is to someday watch a match at any of the tennis Grand Slams, particularly Wimbledon. But since a trip to London will not be happening anytime soon for me, I’ll have to content myself with watching the matches on TV (or rather, on streaming). But the other closest thing I can get to it will probably be one of those upcycled products that use anything that was actually used during the competition, like this Bluetooth speaker from hearO.

Designer: hearO

This is a brand that tries to create products that may not look like most of the audio products that you’ll see in the market. This time around, they used actual tennis balls that were used from this year’s Wimbledon competition for their hear0 3.0 Bluetooth speakers. It still retains the basic shape of a tennis ball as well as its distinct green color. It still has the Slazenger logo as well as the tournament’s branding, in case you forget where it actually came from.

What they did was embed the tennis ball with a 3W speaker. So you get a white speaker grill on one side of the ball and it has a frequency of 100Hz to 20kHz. It has a 500mAh battery and since it’s a ball, you can bring it around with you to play your music or podcasts or audiobook. And if it runs out of power, it also has a charging cradle with both USB A and USB C ports. hearO also promises to plant a tree with every purchase of their latest speaker, in partnership with The European Nature Trust.

Aside from the upcycling element of this product, which is already pretty good, this is also a way for tennis fans to have something from one of the most popular tournaments. You have no way of knowing if your favorite player actually touched the tennis ball/speaker you’re now listening from, but it’s nice to imagine that you have some part of Wimbledon with you.

The post Winbeldon 2022 tennis balls get a new life as Bluetooth speakers first appeared on Yanko Design.

Ingenious tennis racquet grip attachment will pick up tennis balls off the ground for you

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Not only does it make ball-boys obsolete, but it also prevents back injury and allows you to keep your racquet standing upright while you warm up or cool down between sets. The Touch Trap might just be the biggest hardware innovation in tennis since the automatic tennis ball launching machine!

Designer: Zeev Orlov

Click Here to Buy Now: $18 $30 (40% off). Hurry, Super Early Bird offer ends soon!

Meet the Touch Trap, a simple device that solves a simple (but highly annoying) problem. You see, playing tennis is fun… but hunching over to pick up tennis balls every 2 minutes kills the fun of the game. Designed to sit on the bottom end of your tennis racquet’s handle, Touch Trap is a universal retrofittable accessory that makes it easy to pick up tennis balls off the floor. Its claw-inspired design grabs onto any ball without any buttons or mechanisms – just good old-fashioned ball+socket design, allowing you to easily lift balls off grass, clay, carpet, or hard courts… without bending over!

The Touch Trap is designed to universally fit onto virtually any racquet – an understated feature that definitely deserves some praise. Sure, they could design their own racquets with the ball-grip built-in (and make more money per racquet or even license the design), but they chose the more noble route – making it a universal accessory that fits onto any existing racquet, allowing you to upgrade the gear you own instead of splurging on a new racquet.

The genesis of the Touch Trap is your classic ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ story. The idea came to Daniel and Zeev Orlov when they saw many of their friends develop back injuries from hunching over to pick up tennis balls mid-game. The Orlovs promised one of their elderly friends at the court that they’d develop a solution that would help him retrieve the ball without needing to bend forward. A few sketches, iterations, and 3D-printed prototypes later, the Touch Trap was born.

The contraption fits onto the end of your racquet thanks to flexible rubber bottom and uses a hard-plastic ‘clawed’ crown that grips the ball like those claw-gripping games at the arcade. Just hold your racquet by the net with the handle facing down, and push the Touch Trap onto the ball. Once the ball fits into its trap with a satisfying click, lift your racquet up and retrieve the ball by pulling it out of the trap. The entire process takes mere seconds and requires a fraction of the effort you’d originally need.

The Touch Trap’s plastic crown has yet another trick up its sleeve. Aside from being able to grasp tennis balls, its flat, flared base also allows you to make your tennis racquet stand vertically. Rather holistically designed, this unique feature means you literally NEVER have to bend over, whether it’s to pick up a ball or even pick up your racquet. The patent-pending Touch Trap is priced at a discounted $18 for Yanko Design readers and super early bird backers, with worldwide shipping for anyone who cringes at the idea of having to manually pick up a ball while playing tennis. Now if there were only versions for Ping Pong and Badminton too!

Click Here to Buy Now: $18 $30 (40% off). Hurry, Super Early Bird offer ends soon!

The post Ingenious tennis racquet grip attachment will pick up tennis balls off the ground for you first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Springtime Carpet’s unusually beautiful macro weave makes it a visual and tactile treat!

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Designed to make you curious, confused, and then fill you with childish joy, Dilara Yesilova & Paul Ketz’s Springtime Carpet looks and feels like nothing we’ve seen before. Think of it as a scaled-up version of a carpet’s weave, with tiny cylindrical upholstered foam pieces that almost look like experiencing a carpet from a gerbil’s point of view. The cylindrical units are created with undulating heights and are crafted from merino felt, cotton-viscose fabric, and polyurethane foam, looking both unusual and inviting at the same time. Step onto the carpet and it’s an absolute tactile experience that completely complements the carpet’s quirky construction… like laying on a mat of tennis-balls, only a whole lot softer! Disclaimer: Keep away from enthusiastic dogs!

Designers: Dilara Yesilova & Paul Ketz

Pooch Selfie Makes Dogs as Self-Absorbed as Their Masters

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The Pooch Selfie is surely one of the signs of the apocalypse. Like the Selfie Spoon, it is a product that shows a society on the decline, and makes me want to run around freaking out, pulling out my hair. Why do YOU have to take selfies every day? Why does YOUR DOG have to do it now? Please make it all stop.

pooch_selfie_1zoom in

So basically this thing is an attachment that holds a tennis ball above the camera so that your dog will look at it when you’re taking pictures of them. Naturally, it’s already funded on Kickstarter, as the mere mention of the word “selfie” these days seems to make people whip out their checkbooks.

pooch_selfie_2zoom in

You can get one for $13 when they ship this December. Or you could, you know, actually play with your dog instead and make his life even better. Just a thought. Somehow I don’t think this will be the last selfie gadget we see. Though it should be.

[via Geekologie]