Brim Bothers power system moves closer to release + video

Ireland’s Brim Brothers tell us that their Zone power meter is getting closer to launch, and they’re looking at a release some time in the middle of the year.

We’ve told you about the Brim Brothers system before. The system uses ‘pods’, one fitted to each of your shoes.

The pods are connected to sensors that attach inside your cleats, measuring the force between your shoe and the pedal and calculating your power from that. These force sensors don’t affect the stack height at all.

The pods send the information using the ANT+ wireless standard, so you can get a readout on many different devices, such as a Garmin Edge bike computer.

Brim Brothers plan to launch with a version for Speedplay Zero cleats and pedals, so you’ll have to wait if you use Look, Shimano or Time – or anything else, for that matter, because no other system is compatible with Speedplay.

“We’re still doing lots of testing and making many small refinements to hardware and to software as we move towards production,” say Barry Redmond of Brim Brothers. “Launch is planned for the middle of this year, but there are still some unknowns that could shift that a bit. As we’ve said before, it’s a long slow road but we have to make sure the Zone is right.”

One of the key benefits of a shoe-based system is that shifting power measurement between bikes is ultra-easy.

Brim Brothers haven’t released a price yet, although they do say, “It will be competitive with existing systems”. That doesn’t mean it’ll be particularly cheap, though, because none of the other systems are. Power measurement systems are really difficult to produce. Even the mighty Garmin have put back the release of their much vaunted, seldom seen pedal-based Vector system several times – and we’ve stopped hearing about it at all lately.

Brim Brothers don’t offer any figures on the level of accuracy yet either – again, they’ll be “comparable with existing systems” – although they do say that you’ll get independent figures for each leg.

For more info go to www.brimbrothers.com.