Mind-Ball is a smart object designed to reduce stress among students. The object is designed to fit a hand, not too small or big so the user can feel comfortable to use it on campus between lessons, during breaks, on social interactions, or alone. The object couples two main principles to reduce stress operated by the pressing. The first is “in-the-moment sense release” through physical pressure of the ball (similar to a ‘stress-ball’). The second is by “downloading verbal tasks” by recording audio messages onto the ball for future handling. The physical design of the object is composed of soft and rigid material, enabling fidgeting properties. When pressing the ball continually over 2 seconds, the object vibrates, the light turns on, the recorder is activated and the ‘speech to text’ platform is activated. Then, the voice is transformed to text and can be integrated to a task manager platform such as “Monday”, “Trello” and more.

How does it work?
The system has an esp8266 server with a wifi connection, on top of an Arduino controller. A microphone is connected to the controller, used to record the user. In addition, a LED light is connected to the Arduino controller which is activated during recording. There are also power buttons and batteries. The product is powered by a software that allows listening to the user’s recordings using the Arduino API library as well as converting the input to text using the google speech-to-text API. After converting the input to text, the text is sent automatically to a task management tool (e.g., google keep, trello, etc.) using the automation tool – integromat.