When Easton and Blast Motion offered to send one of their Easton Power Sensors to us here at SportTechie, they most likely had in mind that the sensor would fall into the hands of someone good at baseball. If they had even lower expectations, they might even accept someone who used to be good at baseball.
Well, rest assured Easton and Blast Motion employees—this writer was consistently fourth in the batting order on his little league team. I even hit the most home runs on my Cleveland Indians team in the fourth grade. Yes, I blasted a total of three homers in one season, if you include one inside-the-park home run that my overweight 10-year-old self somehow accomplished.
So, I opened the package, took out the sensor and plopped it down on its wireless charger. While the sensor was charging, I quickly realized that I did not have a bat.
Note: if you buy the Easton Power Sensor, you will most likely need a bat.
Having retired from America’s pastime at the tender age of 12, I felt no desire to move my cobweb-strewn bats from my childhood home.
Panicking, I looked around my apartment for anything that could stand in for a bat and a ball—a wrapping paper roll and a small beach ball fit the bill.
So, I downloaded the app which pairs to the sensor, turned my phone’s Bluetooth on and paired the two together. Very easy, very simple so far.
The app has a pretty user-friendly interface as well. There is no button that needs to be pressed in order to prepare for a swing—the sensor can intrinsically tell when you are just swinging around and when you are hitting a ball.
Upon noticing a hit, the sensor will send instant results to your phone in five categories of metrics—those being time to contact, efficiency index, power index, swing speed and blast factor. The blast factor is the most innovative. It is a cumulative score out of 100, grading your overall swing.
Now, back to the story. The sensor comes with a contraption that fits the small sensor onto the butt of the bat. I somehow managed to wrangle it onto the end of the wrapping paper roll and had my roommate pitch me the beach ball. Nothing. Three more tries. Nothing. The app did not record any of it.
My roommate took the sensor and started bouncing it against the wall. Ding. It finally recorded, leading to one of the more impressive insights of this tiny white contraption—that the Easton Power Sensor collects all of its data solely upon the vibrations that it gathers.
This led me to believe that a wrapping paper roll is probably the worst possible instrument for the sensor to pick up vibrations. So, I switched from the wrapping paper roll and beach ball to a foam rolling stick and a stress ball. Surprisingly, this worked. The sensor began to pick up hit after hit, evaluating my absolutely atrocious form with a foam rolling stick. Despite the awful form, I actually managed to put up some decent stats. I began to feel like the Mike Trout of foam rolling sticks and stress balls.
One of the cool features of the app is that there is a social component to it. You can share your hitting metrics with friends, and there is an overall leaderboard.
Somehow, I managed to con my way into the top ten of that overall leaderboard. Whoops.
But, after using this and contemplating the effects the Easton Power Sensor could have on an actual baseball player, it actually is pretty useful.
For the average player, it is like having a batting coach with you at all times, evaluating each and every swing’s form.
It also could have some serious benefits for the coach. The coach of any team could have comparable data for all of the players at his or her fingertips, thus all of their strengths and weaknesses are easily accessible.
It is a powerful little tool, adding a few more stats to the game of baseball.