A Danish tech firm who manufacture strain gauges could be about to start a new power meter price war, saying they’ve now got the cost of their crank-based power technology down to just $6. Sensitivus say they’re on a mission to make power affordable for all, and the price cuts are down to falling electronics costs and maturing technology.
Team Zwatt’s €499 Zpider power meter
Sensitivus (which means ‘sensitive’ in Latin) made a decision to work with pre-existing manufacturers rather than build their own brand when launching as a crowdfunding project back in 2015, and they can now provide their ‘Gauge ApS’ technology to any brand for the price of six US dollars to make a power meter crankset. They say strain gauges can now be bought for under $1, and the total cost on top can be less than $10 for other types of power meter too. The $6 figure refers to the cost of the parts and not the cost to manufacturers, as Sensitivus have now made clear in their updated article on the subject.
Founder Rolf Ostergaard said: “We started our quest to democratise power meters and make it affordable for all through two successful crowdfunding campaigns. Now we are taking the next step and make this mature technology available to manufacturers that want to help put affordable power meters on all bikes”
Sensitivus say the ‘constant falling curve’ of electronics prices plus the gradual maturing of technology have made the lower prices possible. They claim to have pioneered a rechargeable battery with a magnetic charging connector, that has a vibration-sensitive cadence algorithm that is “among the most robust in the industry”, and this was taken up by numerous mountain bike brands soon after it went into production. They also provide complete software set-ups including support for phone apps and back-end tools to enable brands to get the technology incorporated into a crankset in as little as two to three months. Companies that include Sensitivus tech on their products include Team Zwatt, Raceface and Easton.
You can find out more on the Sensitivus website here.
12 thoughts on “$6 power meter? Tech firm claim they can make a power meter for just $6”
Excellent – I’d buy some
Excellent – I’d buy some powermeter cranks if the price comes down enough.
Not me, I’m happy deluding
Not me, I’m happy deluding myself that I’m stronger than I really am
Standard bicycle-industry
Standard bicycle-industry markup on a $6 component will probably result in a finished product price of around $200, available in shops in the UK for £199.
I remember a couple of years
I remember a couple of years ago I read a long piece on how power meters couldn’t EVER be produced for low cost due to techno blah blah blah reason……but yet here we are.
Hopefully it will be game over for £400+power meters, a bit like bike lighting prices have dropped massively due to LEDs etc.
Rick_Rude wrote:
I’ve refused to buy a power meter for years because of the rediculous price of them. This is technology that costs peanuts and it’s about time that the racket is exposed.
Making and supporting an
Making and supporting an accurate and reliable power meter is much more than the price of strain gauges. If you are unaware of the issues, it might be worth investigating some of them.
Not been around here for a few months – this place is still as much a red-top as ever I see.
Is that type face on the
Is that type face on the crank really chosen to look at first glance like Team Twatt?
The bike industry (as most
The bike industry (as most big business) is a complete rip off. It’s nice to see it exposed and seems to be happening more and more nowadays which is good. More spent on marketing than the products. And a lot of very expensive stuff made very cheaply/badly.
Seems like there’s good
Seems like there’s good competition between bike companies though, so people have a choice between highly marketed expensive products and cheaper more functional ones. Ultimately, if there’s a huge price disparity (e.g. $6 strain guages) then that just opens the door to a company undercutting the current products and making lots of money themselves.
Why not ask DC Rainmaker
Why not ask DC Rainmaker about this artical and he will be laughing for hours, sure they can produce a strain guage for $6, but that will not work against all cranks, look at Shimano, nobody has been able (including Shimano) to make an accurate PM for their Ultegra and Dura-Acr crank due to its costruction, also Software, taking the physical movement and turning that into the actual powe figures is massively hard thing to do, we may not like it but we have to pay for the R&D for all parts of the PM, I bet Stages costs hardly anything to build the actual module, but they spent millions developing it, charging the $30 fmanufacturing cost of the unit will never recoup the R&D costs, saying all of this… PM’s are still too expensive ?
While I don’t think we’ll
While I don’t think we’ll suddenly see powermeter versions of chainsets available for £20-£40 above a standard set, the fact they’re offering a fairly ready to go solution that can be integrated into quite a lot of existing products can only be a good thing for consumers really.
I don’t really have much interest in getting a power meter, but if the prices really did become reasonable it’s something I would consider, but at the moment it’s very hard to justify the additional spend.
It would be worthwhile to add
It would be worthwhile to add to these kinds of articles that many companies have tried (and failed) to bring a cheap power-meter to market. They were lured by what appear to be low costs compared with sticker prices. Maybe it would be nice to write an article about all the attempts at cheap power meters that failed – remember those power meters you could install yourself on your own cranks, as well as various kick starters?
Strain gauges are cheap and have been cheap for a long time. What’s expensive is integrating them into a reliable, precise, and accurate system. The engineering (hardware and software) and then the manufacturing (including calibration of each individual unit) is expensive. To get accurate numbers you need to know the orientation of the crank… getting wireless transmission to work reliably is also not super easy.
You must then also remember that these devices are subject to the rigors of the road – temperature variations, water, impacts, etc…
I do think there is a demand for articles which help clear up misconceptions and myths, but they take a bit more time to research and write than what reads as little more than copy+paste from a press kit