Boulder, Colorado-based toy and robotics company Sphero has announced its acquisition of the crowdfunded music tech startup Specdrums. As a result of this purchase, Sphero is set to launch a second version of the sold-out musical tech toy Specdrums in late 2018 or early 2019.

Specdrums are app-controlled rings worn on the user’s fingers that make music by tapping on different colors. Users can tap against anything with color, such as clothes or drawings, and then assign sounds to the colors to create their own virtual drum kits, synths or keyboards.

Steven Dourmashkin and Matthew Skeels, who founded Specdrums in 2016, will work alongside Sphero’s team of developers and engineers to expand into additional products. While Specdrum differs from the company’s previous Disney-branded robotics, such the talking interactive racecar McQueen from Cars 3, Sphero says it sees the app-connected rings as an opportunity to strengthen its STEAM education focus.

In 2017, Specdrums launched a Kickstarter campaign resulting in more than 1,900 backers raising nearly US$200,000.