Pitch Plus – Little League Baseball Wearable Device

Brett Garberman is part of a team that developed Pitch Plus, a wearable device for Little League baseball pitchers

Repetitive pitching is a leading cause of non-contact injuries in Little League.  Monitoring the number of pitches per player for a game, season, or month can be a challenging task.  The Medical Device club at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Health-Tech initiative developed Pitch Plus to help with monitor the pitching activity of Little League players.

The PitchPlus uses a Teensy 3.2 as its processor and also has an ADXL377 accelerometer.  The device collects data on the pitching activity of the player and stores it on an SD card.  Not only does it record pitch count, but the level of force in the pitch as well.  The data can then be imported into MATLAB for analysis.  It also includes a Bluetooth module that allows the data to be live-streamed for live visualization.  This allows for coaches to better monitor players and limit play time when needed to prevent injury.