Our shop charges $25.00 per wheel to mount and balance tires so if you are doing the spare as well then $125.00 is an average price. If you are replacing your tires then we would not charge to install the sensors since the tires would need to be off anyway. Be sure to have the tires rebalanced if you did not replace them as the stems and sensors will alter the balance.
If you are wanting to monitor your spare tire as well be sure the spare wheel will accept a sensor. Most temporary spare tires (donuts) are not meant to be dismounted and might not have room for the sensor.



Be sure the shop uses a torque wrench to mount the sensors correctly.


2. What is an ideal mounting location for the USB TPMS receiver, for both aesthetics and reception?
The instructions tell you to install the receiver in a central location such as the base of the windshield. I found a central location in my truck to be the center console, which just happens to have a USB hub installed in it. In testing the sensors I spread them around my house and even put one in the freezer and refrigerator to monitor temps and to test reception distance and I was very pleased with how far away I could still communicate with all the sensors. 2 of the sensors were 25 feet away from the receiver and I still saw no issues, so I think just about anywhere you do not have excessive RF interference should work. When you first set up the system you are instructed to unplug the receiver several times so be sure to set it up completely before you tuck it away permanently.

3. How do you install and use the software? (Both plug-in and standalone)





I followed the directions that came with the kit to check the system before I mounted the sensors.
RRTMS (from MP3Car.com forums) comes with the plug-in for RideRunner and a tool to configure the sensors and messages that are displayed and spoken (there is a typo in the dialog that speaks when the tire pressure is too high, it says "hight" instead of "high", so check that while you are installing the software). Download the file and extract it to your RideRunner plug-in folder. Be sure to register the .dll file after you copy it to its final location. You will need to add or modify a button in your skin to launch the TPMS screen. The button command is "TMS" and it launches TMS.skin. You can build your own screen to match the skin you are using or there is a test skin included in the RRTMS folder.




CFTPMS (from the Centrafuse downloads section on http://forums.fluxmedia.net/) installs the plug-in for Centrafuse 2.0. It is a simple install. It is an exe file that puts everything where it needs to be. When prompted be sure to install the tools also. The tools folder in your Fluxmedia>centrafuse>plugins>tpms will have a program called TPMS doctor that is used to test communication. Once you install the CFTPMS.exe be sure to go download the update 2.1.9.0. Now that CFTPMS is updated you can set one of your buttons to launch tpms by clicking and holding the button you want it assigned to and selecting it from the list; Then go to settings and select advanced settings and you can enter the tpms section and set your preferences (PSI vs. Bar and such).


4. How do I re-learn the sensors?
I was able to set up my software before I even mounted the sensors in the wheels because the kit is prelearned by the manufacturer. I installed the software as listed above and was able to monitor the temperatures and battery levels to check communication. The manufacturer includes a sheet with the locations the sensors should be mounted.

The instructions say not to use Centrafuse to set up the sensors because it is buggy, but I used both Riderunner and Centrafuse with no issues.

When you rotate your tires you simply change the location of the sensor.





5. How do I add a spare sensor?
Using RRTMS I erased all sensors from the receiver and relearned them following the instructions that came with the kit. Once you select the sensor, you change the tire pressure until the receiver "sees" the change and it registers the sensor.

***Update 2-26-2009
Other power supplies that could be used:
The m3-atx is probably a better supply to use for this project.

How much Power does this use?
260 milli amps for just the receiver.
1.1 amps for the receiver and screen.
Our battery has a capacity at 14.8 volts of 6600mAH.
Does this mean we get 6 hours of run time? Wow.

Host CPU Loads tested on my desktop
DisplayLinkManager is what does the processing for the Wireless VGA adapter.

Hardware used for testing
3 year old 2.8 Ghz Pentium D Dual core CPU
4gb of Ram
Windows XP
800x480 output

CPU Load Results
0% - CPU load with an idle screen (desktop only)
0-2% - CPU load with google talk
2-3% - VLC movie paused
9%-12% - VLC playing a movie



Part 2 Video Transcript:

Hi. My name is Rob Wray with MP3 Car. I told you we would test out this wireless monitor in the car, so for the last hour we’ve been goofing around in the parking lot of our office trying to get this to work. And actually it worked perfectly right off the bat the same way as it did work in our office. I just wanted to do something off-the-wall with it.

So it’s working perfectly. I happen to have a Centrifuge help video loaded on the monitor right now. We’ve got a great wireless signal. We’ve done some calculations recently. We think this little hack job here can get about six hours of wireless time using the 10” monitor. So that’s pretty exciting. And we’ve been really happy with the video quality playback.

The first thing that we tried to do to hack it, to make it look kind of cool and newsworthy was to hack in a USB HDTV tuner. So we did that. It worked well except the HDTV won’t play on this monitor. There’s certain things that don’t work well over ultra wideband USB and apparently the GT HD tuner that we sell in our store is one of those things that doesn’t work well.

We also had some problems with getting StreetDeck to work well wirelessly over ultra wideband, but things like VLC which I used in my previous demo worked wonderfully. You get great frame rate playback, and that sort of thing. So I’m going to go ahead and start this movie here, and you can see that the picture quality’s pretty good.

So we’ve been pretty happy with this as a solution. The only thing that we’ve seen is that, again it doesn’t support all video formats, and you also get – every now and then you’ll get a little bit of a wiggle over here on the left side. I’m assuming that’s from some type of interference that’s happening as a result of the engine alternator or various other little things. But it was happening before and now it’s completely gone away, so I think it’s almost unnoticeable.

So try this at home. Thanks for watching our blog.