Thread: Tire pressure monitor??

i remember reading in one of my many hotrod magazines and engine book that a company had a stand alone device that did that same thing with a small lcd display that showed psi on each tire i want to say it was made by a company called eagle something but don' quote me on it

Its possible somehow, ive seen it listed as features on some cars (i dont remember what cars, but they were very high end i think, euopean maybe).

www.smartire.com

BMW cars have them

My new MINI Cooper S has this. I guess it is nice, though it really is sueful when you get the runflat tires, as you might not know that the tire is flat without it.

I'm pretty sure it is illegal to have ht runflats without the monitoring system.

Twostep

I knew about the expensive systems, and the OEM sytems, but what about building a similar system that interfaces with a PC?

Aside from the bulding of the small units to attach to the tire, it should be simple, right??

I guess so. I believe that the OEM systems don't actually have a sensor inside the tire. I think they measure how much force it takes to turn the tire or something, because my sensor gave me a false flat when I drove through some mud. The manual for the car claims that ice or mud can cause false flats.

Putting something on the valve stem would be somewhat difficult, as you would need to get power and signal wires out to the tire. I know you can use those swivel things, but I think you would need to drill into the axle or something.

Twostep

I just had an Idea about this. To power it you could put a magnet(s) on your break pad and a coil on the wheel to generate electricity to power it. You need some large capacitors to keep the power to the IC flowing and it might not work very well at slow speeds but batteries should do the trick. Using RF would probably be your best bet on getting the signal to the computer. Maybe these Ideas can help you if you try building any thing. I would also think you would need some sort of microprocessor to interface between your computer and the sensor signals.

If you REALLY want to build it instead of buy a full system from www.tirerack.com, take a look at this application note http://www.microchip.com/download/ap...pic/00238a.pdf

Good luck

You can also get all the chips you need for free from them...