Alley Analytix: Bowling Intelligence

Measuring what a bowling ball actually does has traditionally required expensive lane-mounted systems. Alley Analytix set out to put professional-grade motion analytics inside the ball itself.

The challenge

A sensor riding inside a rolling ball is a hostile measurement environment. Off-center placement introduces centripetal artifacts that distort naive readings, motion states change in an instant, signal drift accumulates, and the whole system has to survive real-world use on a small battery. The results also had to be explainable and defensible — good enough for coaching and for patent scrutiny.

Our approach

We kept the system physics-first: deterministic, physically grounded signal processing anchors every metric, with machine learning layered only where it improves usefulness. Predictions were validated against simulation with known ground truth, and the architecture was shaped patent-aware from the start.

What we built

Ternary engineered the platform end to end. Purpose-built sensing hardware, miniaturized to fit a finger-grip form factor with over-the-air firmware updates. A motion-intelligence pipeline that detects release and impact, corrects for off-center placement, fuses orientation, and classifies motion phases. Cloud ingestion built for large simultaneous player populations. On top: coach dashboards for tracking development over time, and a context-aware AI assistant that turns telemetry into coaching guidance.

The outcome

What began as portable telemetry became a coaching-intelligence platform — measurement turned into decision support. The custom hardware makes the product genuinely usable in the field, and the architecture leaves room for expansion into adjacent sports.