Sphero 1.0 & 2.0

Sphero 1.0 and 2.0
The original Sphero was initially prototyped by its inventors, Ian Bernstein and Adam Wilson, with a 3D-printed shell and electronics taken from a smartphone. It was then demonstrated at CES in 2011.

It was released in 2011 and is a white orb that has a diameter of 74 millimetres (2.9 in) and weighs 168 grams (0.370 lb). The processor on board is a 75 MHz ARM Cortex M4. It has two 350 mAh LiPo batteries, two color LEDs, an accelerometer, and a gyroscope. Bluetooth is used for communication and inductive charging for power. A refreshed version, Sphero 2.0, was released in 2013, featuring a twice-as-fast speed, increased LED brightness and was waterproof.

The toys are controlled with a smartphone or tablet running iOS, Android or Windows Phone via Bluetooth. Since they have an accelerometer and a gyroscope, it can also be used as a controller for games on iOS and Android platforms. As it includes an SDK, several apps and games have been developed for the platform.

Users could program the toys with an app called Sphero Macrolab which had a set of predefined macros, and orbBasic which uses a BASIC-based language.

Both Sphero 1.0 and 2.0 have been discontinued.

Sphero 1.0 is not compatible with neither Sphero Play nor Sphero EDU apps