Our balls turn blue when you do touch them. (Man, I’m tired of that joke)

This is one of the test models for our touch sensors and LEDs. Everything worked perfectly then. But when we integrated it into the whole… sigh.
We’ve developed a true love-hate relationship with our sensors. We went through six iterations, and each generation of glowing balls managed to find a different way to break ours.
The first generation wasn’t sensitive enough, so we added more sensor area (conductive wire).
The second generation worked perfectly, but was made of scrap yard components.
The third was fitted with the definitive sensor chip and turned out to be too sensitive, picking up a presence half a metre away. So we removed the extra mass we just added.
The fourth was fitted with the correct LED’s, which apparently caused the sensor to go completely berserk.
In the fifth version we were careful to give the sensor chip everything it needed for optimal performance, and still it pestered us with false highs, interference from the LEDs and low sensitivity.
Oh, how we hated our glowing balls.
With the sixth version we basically gave up, accepting we could only use our LED’s at 25% or so and the sensor would always be a bit flaky. We added the sensor mass we had removed earlier to at least get the sensitivity right. And… lo and behold! It worked! Everything worked! Perfectly!
Oh, how we love our glowing balls.