The long-awaited Brim Brothers Zone DPMX, a power meter that clips onto your shoes and measures power from the cleat, has now hit Kickstarter where it has smashed past its €100,000 target with €175, 443, with 19 days to go.
The Zone DPMX is touted as the first wearable power meter. It’s been in development for several years, road.cc has written a handful of articles charting its slow march towards production. But it seems the Ireland-based company has worked through all the development gremlins and got everything finalised. Delivery is expected in May.
The bad news. The Zone DPMX only works with Speedplay Zero pedals. It uses a special plate that is sandwiched between the sole of the shoe and the cleat (in place of the usual three-bolt adapter). The company says it’s as easy as installing regular new cleats.
This means the system measures power at the point where the power is transferred to the bike. The sensors in the cleat measure the force between the shoe and pedal, and the pod measures motion, and takes all the data and transmits it to a compatible head unit.
It uses ANT+ so it's compatible with a wide range of computers. Battery life is a claimed 15 hours with a 2-hour charge time, and it’s claimed to be IP67 water resistance. Power accuracy is 2%, about the same claim that most power meter manufacturers make. Each pod and sensor plate adds 44g to each shoe.
The company has got a Kickstarter campaign underway and it has already smashed its €100,000 target by some margin. There will be two versions, Zone DPMX Single (left-only) and Zone DPMX Dual (dual-leg) costing €440 and €880 respectively (or €390 and €780 through Kickstarter at the moment. The left-only version is a very competitive price, one of the most affordable power meters on the market at the moment.
The bePRO pedal-based power meter is the one of the cheapest options we've written about recently. It costs £347, and do you get a set of pedals.
Here's a demonstration of the power meter in use.
The power meter market has really got quite exciting over the last couple of years, and it’s one of the most rapidly evolving areas of technology in cycling. From the days when the SRM was the only serious option, there are many good products from Garmin, Powertap, Stages, Pioneer, 4iii, Quarq and others. And there are rumours that Shimano is set to unveil a power meter later this year.
- How to choose a cycling power meter — a buyer's guide to your power training options
The disadvantage to the Brim Brothers offering is that you obviously have to be a Speedplay fan. The advantage is that you can swap between different bikes easily, provided they each have Speedplay pedals installed. There’s also no removal of cranks needed and you can use your preferred chainset.
This widening choice not only offers different ways of measuring power (hubs, cranks or pedals) but it’s slowly driving down the price. It might not be long before all performance road bikes come as standard with integrated power meters.
Find out more at www.kickstarter.com/projects/brimbrothers/the-worlds-first-wearable-powe...
David has worked on the road.cc tech team since July 2012. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds.