SparkCatch, or the Meteor Baseball, was created by two Chinese baseball enthusiasts who spent four years to find a solution which will allow the baseball fans to play the game anytime. After years of research for the materials and the concepts, around 100 tests were carried out, and a lot of prototypes were created, when finally they came up with an illuminated baseball which can bear being hit with a baseball bat. One of the co-founders of SparkCatch, Link, started working on the illuminated baseball in 2013. He created a prototype that year which looked beautiful in the dark but broke after the second throw.
He created another prototype by 2014; this was the same year when he met the other co-founder of the baseball, Tim, who was a designer. The SparkCatch had leather exterior and stitching as a regular baseball, but it was made of an elastic material which could bear being hit with a bat at up to 140km/h without breaking or allowing the components inside to be damaged. The creators also claim that if the water goes inside the ball, it can still be used again after it dries up.
https://youtu.be/w3NRojDZ5og
The lighting components make the SparkCatch baseball unique. The arrangement, number of LEDs, and the size of the holes through which the light emits have undergone testing several times. In the end, the ball was equipped with four high-efficiency LED bulbs which had a lighting power of 100 lumens. The SparkCatch baseball is powered by a 23A battery which provides up to 10 hours of use. Currently, the SparkCatch is only available in China and Taiwan. However, the company aims to expand to foreign markets in the future.
