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Sphero Launches Tiny $50 'Sphero Mini' Robotic Ball

Friday September 29, 2017 5:10 PM PDT by Juli Clover

Sphero, known for its line of robotic balls and droids, today launched the $50 Sphero Mini, the company's most affordable toy yet.

Sphero Mini measures in at about 1.25 inches, making it similar in size to a ping pong ball. It's essentially a tiny version of the original Sphero robotic ball, and it's controlled the same way -- through an app on your iPhone.

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The Sphero Mini connects to an iPhone using Bluetooth and can be used for playing games, learning to code, playing with pets, and more, thanks to a built-in gyroscope, accelerometer, and LED light.

Sphero has designed a series of games that use the Mini as a controller mechanism, and with a future update, it will be programmable using the Sphero Edu app. Unique to the Mini is a Face Drive app feature that lets it be controlled via head movements and facial expressions.

Sphero Mini can glow in millions of colors with the LED lights, and it has a range of 10 meters. The battery in the Sphero Mini lasts for 45 minutes before needing to be recharged, and charging takes an hour. There are also interchangeable shells in a range of colors that can be purchased for the Mini, as well as a pins and cones accessory pack.

Sphero Mini can be purchased from the Sphero website for $49.99.

Top Rated Comments

119 months ago

If your dog eats it, can you still control it all the way through?

Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)

119 months ago

I, for one, welcome our new mini-robot-ball overlords.

Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

119 months ago

So this model does NOT work with Swift Playgrounds. I was thinking this would be a really cheap way to buy a bunch of Sphero's for all my young relatives to code against with Swift but to get that integration requires the Sphere SPRK+ which is $130 rather than $50. They may have succeeded in getting my attention long enough to make the upsell in this case though :p

Just in case anyone was thinking of Swift Playgrounds as I was.

I had the same thought and went searching for more info. I came upon this article ('http://www.smh.com.au/technology/gadgets-on-the-go/sphero-gets-back-to-basics-with-80-mini-robot-20170928-gyr30w.html') which claims Swift Playgrounds support is coming.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

119 months ago

Let’s be honest here; it’s for the cats.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

119 months ago

They got balls to show adults playing with these things

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

thisisnotmyname

119 months ago

So this model does NOT work with Swift Playgrounds. I was thinking this would be a really cheap way to buy a bunch of Sphero's for all my young relatives to code against with Swift but to get that integration requires the Sphere SPRK+ which is $130 rather than $50. They may have succeeded in getting my attention long enough to make the upsell in this case though :p

Just in case anyone was thinking of Swift Playgrounds as I was.

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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