Night Light Balls

Abstract

Improvements in a football and beach ball to allow the balls to be used at night. The illumination from the “EL” lights gives the ball an exciting kaleidoscope of color as it spirals, adding a new and exciting twist to an old game in addition to adding safety to night play. The ball is made of various colored self-skinning flexible urethane foam, or elastomer and has grip ridges between electroluminescent lighting that surrounds ball. The ball is formed with grip ridges to allow small to large hands to easily grip the ball and throw a spiral when wet or dry. At least two different colors of EL lights are equally spaced and glued to the outside of the ball to allow spin on a ball to be more visible. The ball has a compartment that holds a power supply on / off switch and the EL driver.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims the benefit of Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 372,599 filed Aug. 11, 2010 and Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 323,783 filed Apr. 13, 2010 the entire contents of which is hereby expressly incorporated by reference herein.STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT[0002]Not ApplicableTHE NAMES OF THE PARTIES TO A JOINT RESEARCH AGREEMENT[0003]Not ApplicableINCORPORATION-BY-REFERENCE OF MATERIAL SUBMITTED ON A COMPACT DISC[0004]Not ApplicableBACKGROUND OF THE INVENTIONField of the Invention[0005]This invention relates to improvements in illuminated sports equipment. More particularly, the present night light balls includes footballs, baseball, soccer balls, Disks, field markers and gloves with one or more colored electroluminescent (EL) lighting elements.[0006]Description of Related Art including information disclosed under 37 CFR 1.97 and 1.98:[0007]For many athletic events that require an...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0013]It is an object of the night light ball for the ball to have grip ridges to allow small to large hands to easily grip the ball and throw a spiral. The ridges on a beach ball further give the user a good grip when ball is wet.

[0014]It is an object of the night light ball, when configured as a football, for the football to have at least two different colored EL wires. Many more colors can be used. For example a beach ball can have four colors. Each EL wire surrounds the ball equally spaced from each other. The use of different colors allows spin on a ball to be more visible.

[0016]It is another object of the night light ball that the compartment(s) that hold the driver has an electrical plug attached to the inside of the compartment. The plug connects to the driver for easy removing and battery replacement. This plug has wires on the inside of the ball that are connected to the EL wire(s) that are on the outside of the ball.

Problems solved by technology

For many athletic events that require an object to be thrown the play time is limited to daylight hours or when external artificial lighting is available.

While these patents disclose a method that allows the ball to be visible when it is dark, the illumination does not provide any information of the spin of the ball.

This patent does not provide illumination strips that are electrically powered where they can be turned on and off as desired.

They further do not provide the use of more than one color to identify rotation or spin of the ball.

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