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TECH NEWS
Luck announces shoes with built-in power meters
Quick, how many different types of bike component can you get with a built-in power meter? We make it five (cranks, rear hub, bottom bracket, pedals, and cleats). And now six, if you count the power meter shoes just announced by Spanish shoemaker Luck.
Luck says its power meter shoes will have a sensor in each shoe, located below the foot's metatarsus — just above the cleat mounting area, in other words.
The sensors will collect information about power and cadence from each leg each leg and use Bluetooth to transmit it to a mobile phone in real time. Luck says it will be compatible with Android and iPhone, by which we take it to mean there'll be a matching app for each platform.
The sensors will have rechargeable batteries and will be interchangeable between shoes, so if your shoes wear out or get damaged in a crash, you can move them to new shoes.
The sensor and electronics shown in these pics are prototypes, says Luck, with lots of details still to be finalised. The production version will be very light and compact, the company says, and practically imperceptible to the rider.
Luck's power meter shoes are still some way from production, so don't get too excited just yet. The company says it's hoping for Christmas 2014 availability, but the history of power meters outside the main bike transmission is one of long delays.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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11 comments
What about a gadget that measures the deformation of the chainstay? A small helicopter could fly alongside the bike and take measurements every ten thousandth of a second. It could beam the result to the head-up display we are all going to be wearing soon and because all the gubbins is in the helicopter there is no weight penalty. C'mon!
From the manufacturers viewpoint they should look at strain guages built into the chain, maybe several links per chain with wireless transmission of data to a device elsewhere (handlebars, a following car or a drone flying above!).
That way they get all power applied, up or down, at every stage of pedal stroke and even better the technology is built into a peice of kit that wears out very quickly so they'd sell loads of replacement chains at high prices!
Insoles. The future of power meters is insoles. Use any shoe, cleat, bike combo you like. Stick the battery and other gubbins in a box that can be attached at the heel somewhere if need be i.e. like the garmin vector thing that hangs off the crankarms.
Off you go then techy people - get that sorted and insoles will be number seven and the best.
Wouldn't work... and the reason it wouldn't work is the same reason I have reservations about this system... namely pull power, and the negative effect of not pulling up on the pedals for the up stroke.
When you really give it beans, you will pull up as well as push down, and when pedaling normally, the most efficient pedallers are the ones that can negate the negative effect of not pulling up... i.e. you can realistically expect to pull up all the time, but its how much of the pedal stroke you can engage forward force, at best not negative forces.
An insole system and most probably this system can only pushing force.
The answer, is close to what Luck are putting forward (hell they may have done it), is a system that has a plate between cleat and shoe that can measure force in both planes.... even that wouldn't really work as the forces aren't as simple as up and down.
Ok then, Bionic legs? Too controversial right now?
Intelligent BB grease?
Monkey tennis?
How about making some to be installed inside your body? They should be coming down in size soon, so it shouldn't be too difficult.
You could then use them with different shoes, cleats, pedals, hubs, bottom brackets, bikes. All you'd need is a small operation and have a couple of little bumps in your legs.
You read it here first.
Christmas 2014 seems rather quick if they haven't started production yet?
Got an email from Zone saying theirs are finally being launched. Price is disappointingly high though, especially compared to Stages.
I'd love to see these compared with the other methods to see how accurate they all are.
Waterproof for the UK?
Just to clarify, you would be able to move them to new Luck shoes, but not just any shoes, right?