BrakeAce: MTB Brake Sensor and App Combo

BrakeAce: MTB Brake Sensor And App Combo

Project 2021-08-23 15:39:17 +1200

View our Kickstarter campaign funded to over $101K

We are currently in development based on our successful Kickstarter campaign. The aim for final delivery is Q1 2022! Pledges on our PledgeMe campaign will be added to our Kickstarter production.

BrakeAce is the world's first braking sensor and app combo, designed to help mountain bikers get faster without getting fitter.

The sensor measures every aspect of your braking, while the app crunches the data.

Like any great coach, it cuts through the noise by showing you three Key Opportunities from every run you do - the three places on the trail you can improve the most.

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For mountain bikers, our brakes are our throttle. Yes we pedal uphill, but braking is much more important than pedaling once we head back down.

Braking is one of the most important aspects of mountain biking, and even small changes in braking can save over one second on every turn. 

Unfortunately, no mountain biker knows where or how they brake, or why their friends are faster - not even the pros.

BrakeAce helps you make changes quickly and easily, as if you had a coach with you around every corner.

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Watch this video here https://youtu.be/cUT9y89_900

Measuring and analyzing braking is the mountain bike equivalent to measuring power in road cycling – power meters progressed cycling, and BrakeAce advances MTB.

Once you finish your ride or run, the app will show you three Key Opportunities. This is where the rubber hits the trail and you can start improving.

You’ll get a FlowScore evaluating your overall braking performance, a definitive way for you and your friends to compare braking. You can also easily see your braking Duration, Intensity, and Modulation for all braking, as well as front/rear balance, caliper temperature, and enough meaningful metrics to keep you busy until your next ride!

Automated braking analysis

FlowScore to easily compare between friends and track progress

Key Opportunities show you WHERE and WHAT to improve

Works with any brake 

Any riding style - XC, Trail or DH compatible

Rechargeable battery

Lightweight - only 87 grams

Advanced cornering analysis

BrakeAce is for any rider who has limited time but still wants to beat their buddies.

Know where and what to improve so you waste less time

Stop guessing about how to get faster

Improve your times and get an edge on your riding buddies 

 PLAY

Watch this video here https://youtu.be/8zT8vnOEcLg

BrakeAce is designed for any mountain biker, regardless of their riding ability or what kind of bike they ride.

BrakeAce is equally as valuable for XC hardtail riders as it is for burly DH rigs.

On the XC side, few riders know that they are braking away 25% of all the energy that they put into the pedals. Improving by only a small percentage can save time on every corner, allowing you to pedal harder when it really counts.

Gravity and trail riders already know their braking needs to improve, but they have no idea where to start.

BrakeAce users have gained an average of 5 seconds per 2 minutes of trail in just one session.

Using very sensitive strain gauges inside the sensor, BrakeAce samples your braking 100 times per second on each brake. Various algorithms process the raw data, and the app combines this information with aspects of the trail to make it super simple to analyze.

Brake events are analyzed for Intensity, Duration, and Modulation, and BrakeAce determines the three sections of the trail where you have the most room to improve on. These 3 sections are called your Key Opportunities, and BrakeAce tracks your progress through these sections.

Because BrakeAce measures the direct interaction between the brake caliper and the rotor, you can rely on its accuracy time and again.

The sensor is small, lightweight and waterproof, so you can use it on every ride. Thanks to a sleek, rugged design, you won’t feel or even notice BrakeAce on your bike.

BrakeAce is designed to be used on every ride - just like a power meter. Because every ride is stored in the app, you can view it at any time on your phone or computer and track your improvement.

BrakeAce fits exactly like a normal spacer. You can install BrakeAce or swap it to another bike with only a 5mm allen key.

 PLAY

Watch this video here https://youtu.be/9HZP4msrpNA

BrakeAce mounts directly between your frame or fork and your brake caliper. Here, BrakeAce can sense how your brake caliper is interacting with the rotor every time your brakes are applied. There is no movement in the sensor and you won’t notice it is there. BrakeAce is protected from damage due to its unobtrusive design.

To ensure proper fit on your bike, ensure your bike has:

-74mm post mount (standard mount) on frame and fork

-One rotor size up (+20mm) from the minimum accepted on your frame or fork

-Enough brake hose to move the caliper about 25mm (stock length is enough)

Once BrakeAce is mounted to your bike, you can head out to any trail and start getting faster. Connect your sensors wirelessly to your phone and ride as you normally would. The BrakeAce recording feature works with any Android Pie (2018) or newer, or iOS 12 (2018) or newer. Final details are in development. 

Once you've finished your ride or run, BrakeAce takes the complex raw data and turns it into simple, comparable metrics for each brake event. All rides are stored for you in the BrakeAce app.

BrakeAce knows the Duration, Intensity, and Modulation of each brake event. Things like brake balance, total kilojoules, average power, FlowScore, and even brake temperature are shown for you. 

The app cuts through all of the hundreds of places you braked, and shows you just three Key Opportunities where you have the most room for improvement. 

The BrakeAce PRO app plots all your braking events on GPS across the whole trail. You can view details on any of your hundreds of braking events, view your overall FlowScore or Braking Performance scores, or just focus on improving your Key Opportunities.

You can view your rides on any device with an internet connection, including phone, tablet or computer, making it easy to analyze at any time or to make trailside adjustments to your riding.

BrakeAce doesn’t tell you to let off the brakes. The app shows you your Key Opportunities, which are the 3 places on the trail where you have the most room for improvement. BrakeAce shows you whether your Modulation, Intensity or Duration can be improved, and even if you are doing Brake Checks. 

 PLAY

Watch this video here https://youtu.be/npBi7wcMKCo

For every new line or strategy you try, you can see your FlowScore to easily know if you were able to go faster or ride with more control.

BrakeAce instagram https://www.instagram.com/brakeace/

BrakeAce was created by a team of world-leading MTB scientists in New Zealand. Our team pioneered research into the physiology, vibrations and power output in mountain biking, and have published worldwide.

Taking it even further, we created the first ever brake power meter and researched braking for over 6 years. Results from our research has been published in scientific journals, checked by international experts, and presented in conferences worldwide.

BrakeAce was created in New Zealand by passionate riders just like you.

Matt, BrakeAce’s founder, grew up in the family bike shop in Pennsylvania, USA. After years of racing at the elite level, he got the idea for BrakeAce during his PhD in New Zealand when he was racing neck-and-neck with a very fit roadie - Matt could hear his squeaky brakes and knew this was the only way he was keeping up! 

Matt spent his entire life racing, and has spent the last 10 years coaching riders. He left his University job and is focused on bringing BrakeAce to you.

Our team is further made up of leaders in the industry. 

For BrakeAce, it was never going to be good enough just to record your braking and pump out some squiggly lines on graphs.

That’s why we spent years testing out the best way to show riders how to improve!

BrakeAce takes every single braking event and filters them down to the 3 places on the trail where you can improve the most. Things like the brake intensity, duration, modulation, and trail speed all come to play to help BrakeAce show you this as accurately as possible.

By focusing on improving the FlowScore on their 3 Key Opportunities, riders have been able to go 1-7 seconds faster in just two runs of a normal decent.

Without BrakeAce it’s impossible to know which braking events are OK, and which parts of the trail can be ridden with more control.

We’ve all heard of Modulation, but what is it? Before BrakeAce, there had only been claims by magazines and companies about this magical feeling of modulation, so we developed a way to measure the modulation of every brake event. You even get an overall Modulation Score.

Brake Balance is the percentage of front to rear energy being taken up by each brake. Even though we've always been told that the front brake is the most powerful, many riders use the rear brake much more!

Brake Checks - we all do this when we aren’t confident about what’s ahead. BrakeAce shows you where on the trail you did this so you can get in control and gain confidence.

The FlowScore is like a rolling tally of all your braking as you ride, and you can use this score to compare with your friends at the end of the run or to decide who buys drinks. Since it's super simple but very powerful, you can use this one single score to determine where and why your friends went faster, and even use it to settle arguments about which type of pedal is best.

Other unique braking metrics include:

• FlowScore to easily compare between anyone, anywhere

• Average event duration and number of events

• Brake time and duration of every event

• Brake temperature

• Front/rear balance

• Total kilojoules to compare with your power meter

• Event types like Brake Checks, Stabs, & Critical Events

• Key Opportunities showing you where and what to improve

You have the option to either use the free BrakeAce free app, or upgrade to BrakeAce PRO as an add-on at 45% or greater savings.

All of these features are in our development pipeline, with some already functioning and all of them tested to some level. By hitting these stretch goals in our campaign we will be able to expedite development of these features.

$125,000, we will expedite the ability to export your braking data to sync with your POV camera. This feature already works well. We will create detailed instructions and video tutorials on how to create videos like this one:

At $150,000, we'll expedite the ability to compare your rides side-by-side. So far riders comparing rides side-by-side open multiple windows of the app and it works great (check out our webinars on YouTube). We want to make it super easy to see how you've improved by showing your rides side-by-side in the same view. We've already discussed implementation internally.

Expedite video tutorials for your Key Opportunities when we hit $200,000. Based on the trail profile and the braking you can improve, BrakeAce will automatically suggest skills you can work with the help from professional skills coaches.  To release this feature we need to spend more time with our coaches to make the right videos for our AI. We have already been in touch with a number of coaches who are interested in helping complete this feature.

BrakeAce started as a university research project where we looked to unlock all the unknowns about mountain biking. We had an extremely small budget, but we tested dozens of riders with this first prototype over thousands of tests on the trails. Our findings were checked and reviewed by scientists all over as we published in the science community.

No one had looked at braking in bikes to this extent before because raw data was difficult to understand or use. Since we had learned so much about braking, we had the opportunity to provide advice to bike companies around the world.

From here the focus was on making the data easy to understand and use for everyone. We created unique software that made braking easily comparable between riders, and developed and tested unique scores. Dozens of riders used this new BrakeAce app to get faster on their local trails.

We partnered with a world-leading power meter manufacturer to create a smaller prototype, and have used this on trails around the world. 

A number of major brake companies use BrakeAce to make better brakes and make their riders faster.

One of the major aspects of development was to make the data simple to understand and easy to compare between riders or trails. It was impossible to do this with raw data, so we spent years testing the right things to measure and the easiest way to show this to riders so that they could improve. 

Below you can see a video we did with MTB legend, Jeff Lenosky, while our software was still in development.

To date we have tested over 100 riders in over 1000 tests, and the BrakeAce system has been used with some of the largest companies in the bike industry.

Now the sensor is tiny, and fits between your frame and fork like any standard spacer!

BrakeAce is compatible with any 74mm post mount frame or fork, which is the standard mount. BrakeAce fits like a spacer between your frame/fork and the brake caliper, and requires you to utilize a rotor that is one size up from the smallest that your bike will accept. Any wheel size or rotor thickness works.

Examples:

XC bikes with 160 post mount use 180mm rotors with BrakeAce

(e.g. Fox 32 fork and Transition Spur frame, etc.)
 

Trail/enduro bikes with 180 post mount use 200mm rotors with BrakeAce

(e.g. RockShox Pike or Lyrik fork and Norco Sight frame, etc.)
 

 DH bikes with 200 post mount use 220mm rotors with BrakeAce

(e.g. Fox 49 fork and Intense M29 frame, etc.)
 

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BrakeAce isn't going to stop here. 

BrakeAce will never take the place of a skills coach, but it will change how you approach getting faster and how skills coaches work with you.

When cycling power meters were first introduced, coaches were worried that they'd be replaced. Fast forward to today, and fitness coaching has never been better thanks to software companies like TrainingPeaks who made it possible to coach remotely.

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This is where we are headed with BrakeAce.

BrakeAce has already started building a network of coaches so that riders on any kind of bike around the world can improve their skills.

Join our email list on BrakeAce.com to stay up-to-date

Risks and challenges

Hardware

Wired BrakeAce sensors have been used extensively over the last 6 years around the world. Wireless sensors have been prototyped and will undergo improvements before going into production. Due to strategic partnership with proven power meter manufacturers, we are able to streamline wireless upgrades. This funding goal will allow us to finalize designs, tool up and complete production.

Software

The most difficult barrier for BrakeAce to overcome was highly effective and insightful analytic software that riders can use on the trail. Our analysis app has been fully functional and tested extensively over the last 18 months with riders from beginner to professional around the world. You can even try it yourself on brakeace.com. This funding goal will allow us to complete mobile development. Never settle We are very confident in our timeline, but it's our core belief to never settle for a mediocre product, so we won't be compromising on quality in order to save time. Should any issues arise we promise to keep you updated every step of the way and deliver you the best quality product as soon as possible.

COVID-19

The health and safety of our team and partners is always our top priority. We follow all government-mandated guidelines and always err on the side of caution when it comes to the physical and mental health of our team and partners.

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