Flying Orb Ball Tricks: From First Throw To Showing Off

Learn the setup before the tricks

Every trick in this article starts the same way: switch the ball on, hold it upright, shake it until the rotor spins up, then throw. If you skip the upright hold, the ball sets its reference attitude wrong and every throw that follows behaves oddly.

Give yourself an open space of at least four or five metres in every direction for the first session. Most 'my ball doesn't work' complaints are really 'my hallway is too short'.

Trick one: the boomerang return

This is the throw that sells the toy. Hold the ball flat, aim slightly above the horizon, and throw gently forward with a small tilt. Do not power it. The curve needs time and distance to develop, and speed flattens it.

The common mistake is throwing like a baseball. Think closer to skimming a stone — a smooth release, not a snap.

Once the ball starts curving back, adjust one variable at a time. More tilt tightens the curve; less tilt widens it.

Trick two: the hover

Hold your open palm flat under the ball and let the proximity sensor do the work. As your hand rises, the ball climbs; as it falls, the ball descends. With practice you can walk across a room with the ball riding above your hand.

The mistake here is a cupped hand. Cup your palm and the sensor reads an inconsistent distance, so the ball bobs. Keep the hand flat and the movement slow.

Surface and light matter for this one. If the hover is unreliable outdoors in strong sun, try it indoors before assuming a fault.

Trick three: the ascent

Throw straight up and watch how high it climbs before it comes back down to you. Kids will do this for twenty minutes unprompted, competing on height.

The mistake is doing it under trees. The ascent is the trick most likely to lose your ball in a branch or on a roof — take it to open ground.

Trick four: hand-to-hand passing

Two people, four or five metres apart, each with a flat palm. Pass the ball between hands by drawing your palm out from under it toward your partner as they bring theirs in.

This is the trick that turns a solo toy into a family activity, and it is the reason a second ball is worth owning: two balls in the air between three people is a genuinely different game.

Trick five: the illusion spin

Place your hand under the ball and let it spin in place, defying gravity for onlookers. Done in a dark garden with LEDs running, this is the trick that produces the reaction videos.

The mistake is impatience. Let the ball settle into a stable hover for a second or two before you start moving your hand in patterns.

Practising without frustration

Ten-minute flight time is a feature here, not a bug: it forces short, focused practice sessions instead of an hour of diminishing returns. Charge between sessions and stop while everyone still wants another go.

Track progress in distance rather than complexity. A clean return from six metres is a better milestone than a sloppy attempt at a two-ball pass.