Set up your Partner Lite
Choose your sport
Product overview
What's in the box
- 1Partner Lite
- 2Ball Hopper
- 3Battery
- 4Battery Charger
No Station, Station Holder or Station Case — the Lite is stationary and does not use a Station.
Product overview
Know your Partner Lite
- Camera
- Ball Funnel
- LED Indicators
- Hopper Mount Holes
- Ball Launcher
- Ultrasonic Sensors
- Power Button
Step by step
Setting up your Partner Lite
Four steps from the case to your first drill. Allow about five minutes the first time.
Insert the battery and power on
Plug the fully charged battery into the back of your Partner Lite and press the power button.
Place the Partner Lite on court
Place the Partner Lite on the court, at the designated spot — the same spot as the Partner.
Courts are tight, so keep bags, paddles and spare balls off the playing surface.
The court is enclosed, so set the Partner down with room between it and the back glass.
Attach the ball hopper
Attach the ball hopper netting to the Partner Lite. Note: the hopper is not square.
Then fill the hopper with tennis ballsoutdoor pickleballspadel balls.
Connect the app
Open the app and follow the three steps it walks you through: turn on, connect, and name your machine. Your phone joins the Partner's own Wi-Fi network, so you don't need court or home Wi-Fi.
Reference
Battery charger
What the two indicator lights on the battery charger mean.
| Status | Red light | Green light |
|---|---|---|
| Charger has power | Off | Blinking |
| Low, but charging | Solid | Off |
| Charging, near full | Solid | Solid |
| Fully charged | Off | Solid |
| Error | Blinking | Blinking |
If you see the error pattern, unseat the battery and reseat it. If it persists, get in touch below.
Before you start
Get the Tennibot app
The app drives the Partner. Download it before your first session.
Once you're connected, pick your sport in the app — TennisPickleballPadel — before starting a drill. Drills, ball speeds and court zones are all sport-specific.
Step by step
Pair your machine
Three steps, once. Allow about two minutes the first time.
Every Tennibot broadcasts a private network on court and your phone joins it directly. There is no internet involved and no account to create, so the app works the same on a court with no signal. Adding a home or club network later is optional and only lets the machine download its own software updates.
Start by telling the app whether you are adding a Partner or a Rover, and which sport you play. Sport is not cosmetic: it sets the speed and spin ranges you get later. Then the app walks you through three steps.
Turn on your Partner
Press the power button and wait. The light flashes while the machine boots, and the app tells you to wait until it stops. Tap Next too early and the app will look for a machine that is not broadcasting yet.
Connect, one way or the other
There are two routes to the same place and you only need one of them. Both end with your phone on the machine's network.
Option A · faster
Enter the activation code
On the back of your Quick Start card, matching the last four characters of the serial number. Type it in and tap Activate. The app works out the network name and joins it for you; on iPhone, approve the system prompt that asks to join.
Option B · no code needed
Join the Wi-Fi yourself
Tap I don't have an activation code. Open your phone's Wi-Fi settings and join the network named after the machine's serial, beginning with Tennibot-. The password is tennibot. Come back, check the network shown matches, and tap Next.
Name your Partner
This name is only used for in-app reference.
Pairing is a one-off. From then on you power the machine on, join its network, pick it in the app and tap Connect.
Orientation
The home screen
Home shows what the connected machine can do right now, so it changes depending on whether a Partner or a Rover is active.
Screens throughout this guide are shown in tennis colours. The app tints itself to the sport you picked.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Quick Play | Feed balls immediately with the settings under your own thumb. The mode you will use most. |
| Drills | Run a sequence of different shots, from a library or one you built. |
| Turn Off | Shuts the machine down properly. Use this rather than pulling the battery. |
| Calibration | Re-teaches the machine where it is on court. Run it if placement changed or aiming has drifted. |
| Follow me | Hands aiming to the machine so it tracks you instead of feeding to a fixed spot. |
Everyday use
Quick Play
Aim the head where you want the ball, set the shot, press Play.
Aim the head
The controls around the head swing the launch direction left and right and tilt it up and down. This decides where the ball lands, so set it first and let everything else follow.
Set the shot
Speed runs from 10 to 70 mph, spin from 3.5k RPM of backspin to 3.5k of topspin with flat in the middle. Drag either slider for a precise value, or tap a chip to snap to a known setting. The speed track shades toward red as you push into the top of the range.
Speed
- Slow30 mph
- Medium40 mph
- Fast47 mph
Spin
- Heavy Topspin3k top
- Topspin1k top
- Flat0 RPM
- Backspin1k back
- Heavy Backspin2k back
Speed
- Casual20 mph
- Club Avg30 mph
- Tournament40 mph
- Tour Avg50 mph
- Top 1060 mph
- Ben Johns62 mph
Spin
- Heavy Topspin1,500 top
- Topspin900 top
- Flat0 RPM
- Backspin600 back
- Heavy Backspin1,200 back
Presets and the countdown
When a combination works, save it with the bookmark button. Presets sits at the top of the screen, so your warm-up feed and your heavy topspin feed end up one tap apart instead of three dials apart.
Next to Play is a countdown, five seconds by default. Set it long enough to walk to your side of the court and you can start a session without anyone holding your phone.
Beyond a single feed
Drills
A drill is a sequence of shots, each with its own speed, spin, trajectory and target. Instead of fifty of the same ball, you get a pattern that moves you around.
How it plays
The Partner Lite plays from one spot, varying the shot: pace, spin, trajectory and where it aims. That covers groundstroke, volley and return work from a single position.
Ready to use
Drills that come pre-loaded, from Tennibot and from coaches.
| Library | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Tennibot Essentials | The core set and the right place to start: Forehand, Backhand, Surprise Me, Variety and Full-court. The first two build a wing, Surprise Me hides the pattern from you, Variety mixes shot types, and Full-court makes you cover ground. |
| Pro-inspired | Patterns modelled on how points are constructed at the professional level, rather than isolated repetition. |
| Coach Drills | Drills written by working coaches and players, browsable by author. Donald Young, Eva Beyebach, Alex Chan, Liza West and the American Racket Sports Association are among them, and the list grows with app updates. |
Your drills
| Entry | What it's for |
|---|---|
| AI Drill Creator | Describe a drill in plain language and the app builds the shot sequence. Still marked Beta, so treat what comes back as a first draft: it hands the drill over for review and you can change any shot before saving. |
| Custom Drills | Anything you have built yourself. |
| Favorites | Star a drill from any library and it lands here. Worth doing in your first week, so your regular session is two taps deep instead of five. |
Making it yours
Build your own drill
A custom drill starts empty. Set the mode, tap Add shot, and build the sequence one ball at a time.
The pencil renames the drill, the star sends it to Favorites, and tapping any shot in the list reopens it for editing.
What defines a shot
| Setting | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Repetitions | How many times this ball repeats before the drill moves on. High for grooving one stroke, low for a pattern that keeps changing. |
| Delay | The gap before the next ball, in seconds. This is the dial that decides whether a drill is technical work or a lung-buster, so change it before you reach for more speed. |
| Trajectory | Lob, Normal or Drop. The same speed and spin arrive completely differently depending on flight path, and this is the setting most people forget exists. Drop builds short-ball work; Lob makes someone move back. |
| Speed and spin | The same sliders and chips as Quick Play, set per shot rather than for the whole session. |
| Placement | Tap a zone on the court diagram to say where this ball should land. |
Housekeeping
Settings worth knowing
Most of Settings you will never open. Three entries matter.
| Setting | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Devices | Every machine you have paired, with the nicknames you gave them. Switch the active machine here, or add another one. |
| Saved Wi-Fi Networks | Home or club networks the machine can use to reach the internet, for one reason only: downloading its own software updates. You do not need this to play. Adding nothing here costs you nothing on court. |
| Software Update | Installs new machine firmware over a saved network rather than the machine's own on-court one. Run it at home rather than five minutes before a session, since updates take time and the machine restarts afterwards. |
Quick fixes
If something is off
| Symptom | What to do |
|---|---|
| App will not find the machine | Check your phone is on the Tennibot network rather than your club Wi-Fi or cellular data. The app shows the network you are on, so you can compare it against the machine's serial. Phones with automatic switching sometimes hop back to a remembered network; rejoining by hand fixes it. |
| Activation code rejected | The code is the last four characters of the serial number, and the app capitalises it for you. Check for a zero being read as the letter O. If it still will not take, use I don't have an activation code and join the Wi-Fi by hand instead. You lose nothing by going that way. |
| Balls landing short or long | Run Calibration from the home screen before you touch anything else. Leave the per-shot advanced tuning alone until calibration has been ruled out. |
| Update will not run | Updates are the one thing that needs real internet, through a saved network. On the machine's own court network there is nothing to download from, which is expected rather than a fault. |
Have a question?