We've been shown the new, very affordable power meters being promised by Danish start-up Zwatt at the Eurobike show currently taking place in Friedrichshafen, southern Germany. The interesting thing to note? The maker plans to offer it for $200 up-front, then asks for a $5 monthly subscription charge for two years. At the end of the two year period, the subscription fee drops to zero.
The project already smashed its Kickstarter goal earlier this year, based on the promise of cheap power meters that only require you to commit to logging at least 30mins of recorded riding time per month in return. The maker want you to log this riding time in its app, which will allow it to improve the product and get more data on how to accurately measure signal and filter out noise caused by things like vibrations.
The man behind the project, Rolf Ostergaard, told us that there are three models planned – crank arm-based, spindle-based and spider-based – and hopes to get out the first units this December. That will be 25 units of the spider-based model and 50 units of the crank arm-based model. Then, based on the data these units generate and the user feedback, he hopes to start producing an updated version of the power meters that are closer to ready for full production.
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Metrics covered include power, cadence, torque effectiveness and pedal smoothness, all transmitted simultaneously via Bluetooth Smart and ANT+ to any compatible device.
While this is the first time we've seen power meters crowdsourcing their development data from the public, it fits nicely into a general trend of power meters getting more and more affordable, particularly models that fit strain gauges into the crank arm, like Stages.
Zwatt's crank arm power meter
Zwatt's spider-based power meter
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