ABS for youth baseball — stadium scale vs one iPhone
MLB’s Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System landed in 2026: Hawk-Eye cameras, personalized zones, challenge graphics on the board in seconds. Parents and coaches immediately search “ABS for Little League.”
MLB / MiLB: twelve cameras, one ballpark
League infrastructure — high-speed optical tracking, on-site processing, challenge workflow built into the broadcast. Built for 100 MPH and a fixed stadium. Reported margin of error: approximately one-sixth of an inch. MLB officials have stated they are 95% confident the system is accurate to within 0.39 inches (9.9 mm) of a tracked pitch’s true location, and 99% confident it is accurate to within 0.48 inches (12 mm) of its recorded position.
Your field: one iPhone, real 3D, real time
HeyBLU locks a 3D strike zone to the physical plate, tracks the baseball through space on the phone, and speaks Strike or Ball out loud.
In internal testing, HeyBLU replays recorded AR sessions against ground-truth pitch locations from AccuracyCore — a two-camera field coordinate system — and disagrees by about 1.5 inches on average, roughly half a baseball’s width. Same pitch, replayed on the phone, measured against an independent reference.
Optimized for outdoor daylight youth baseball — tested heavily on sub-70 MPH pitching. Mount within 20 feet of home plate in foul territory. Indoor and night use are on the roadmap.
Most phone “pitch trackers” chart velocity or draw a zone overlay from a camera behind the pitcher. HeyBLU is plate geometry from the backstop — the same problem stadium ABS solves, compressed onto the device in your pocket.
Using HeyBLU at scrimmages or games? See games & umpire training. Setup: Help
Stadium ABS energy. Local field hardware.
Related: Automated strike zone apps · Bullpen apps