The Belle Velo

The Brim Brothers have finally named their shoe based power meter “Zone”, I’ve been following these guys for a couple of years now and it pretty exciting to see a near production version of their power meter.

So how does it work?

It measures the forces between your shoe and the pedal, and calculates power based on that. The force sensors are in the cleat under your shoe, so the system will work on any bike you get onto, without anything special fitted to the bike.

From what I can gather it uses a form of capacitive ceramic pressure sensor that sits between your show and your cleat.  The more you press down on the pedals the more “electricity” the ceramic plate produces, this is what the sensor reads and converts the voltage into a wattage calculation. 

Either way it’s a unique and interesting application of power measurement, it also means that power is measurable on each leg and measurable throughout the rotation of the pedal stroke. It’s bound to produce some interesting data. :)

Check out the Brim Bothers here.