The Accuracy of a Real Time Sensor in an Instrumented Basketball

Integrating sensing devices into sports equipment such as tennis racquets, basketballs and soccer balls has great potential for measuring performance, training athletes and encouraging participation. These innovative, interactive tools provide real time feedback systems for collecting and analysis sports data and could provide effective support for coaches and athletes. The 94fifty™ is an instrumented basketball that has the same specifications as a standard basketball with the addition of a sensor that provides data on shot arc, shot speed, and number of dribbles in real time through a smartphone or tablet device app. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the sensor accuracy in the 94Fifty on measures of shot arc and dribbling in relation to Dartfish™ video analysis software.To measure the shot arc, five adult basketball players were recorded performing 28 shots from various positions for a total of 140 trials. For dribbling 260, 4-12 year old children were video recorded dribbling for 10 seconds each. We compared results using Cronbach's alpha. Shot angle reliability coefficients between the 94Fifty software and Dartfish video analysis alpha = 0.998. No differences were found in the dribbling count between the video analysis and the 94Fifty sensing basketball. While Cronbach's alpha was very high for shot arc, a detailed analysis reveals discrepancies in arc angle on individual shots where 78 out of 140 angles were the same, 59 were within +/-1 degree and three were +/-3.5 degrees.Participants universally enjoyed receiving feedback on their performance. This new technology could redefine the way players are trained and could encourage creative approaches to practice planning and implementation.