Mark P

It's both a novelty gadget as well as a very good safety feature/device.

<img src="http://ctny.a4.org/mark/s4/smartire/dsc02348.jpg">

<img src="http://ctny.a4.org/mark/s4/smartire/dsc02350.jpg">

I've had it in for about two weeks now and love the peace of mind it gives me.

I purchased a set of transmitters for my summer tires and a set for my winter tires. The full function remote display is capable of receiving signals from 20 tires at once. The display shows a "towing vehicle" (ie a car truck, etc - anything that's *not* a trailer) and also an image of a trailer. Essentially, both images are of a rectangle with a curved front bumper. The towing vehicle is identified because a windshield is also displayed for that. You can set 10 tires to the towing vehicle and 10 for the trailer, but you can't have any duplicates. I have my 4 winter tires set as the 4 corner tires on the trailer and my summer tires as the 4 corner tires on the towing vehicle. The sensors/transmitters are motion activated, so only the ones that are sending signals show up on the display (ie When I scroll through the tires, I only see the 4 trailer ones now - and then in the summer, when I scroll through, I'll only see the 4 towing vehicle ones).

You can view Pressure and Temperature for each wheel. Pressure can be in PSI or bar and temp in F or C.

You can set three different alerts:
1.) Low Pressure - at a value that you want to be alerted that you may have a flat.
2.) High Temperature - running to aggressive at the track?
3.) Pressure deviation - notifies you if your pressure changes by +/- X degrees from a setting that you tell it.

Also, I think it compensates some of the display for temperature. That is, if your tires is at 35 PSI when cold (65F, IIRC), as the temperature goes up, pressure will as well. But so long as the pressure goes up appropriately based on the temp, the gauge will continue to read 35 PSI, so you do not become alarmed at the raising pressure, etc. I think this can be defeated as well. In addition to pressure and temp, you can also view this compensation that's been added in. (ie, it may display -2PSI if it's reading 35PSI but is actually at 37PSI and a higher temp).

Nonetheless, this thing is pretty damn cool and now I just need to mount and hardwire the display.

I purchased this to avoid the flat I had on my A4. With a 17" rim, the tire is low profile enough that I was unable to tell that I had a flat before it did fatal damage to the tire:

<img src="http://ctny.a4.org/mark/a4/maintenance/flattire/mvc898f.jpg">

<img src="http://ctny.a4.org/mark/a4/maintenance/flattire/mvc902f.jpg">

<img src="http://ctny.a4.org/mark/a4/maintenance/flattire/mvc002f.jpg">

<img src="http://ctny.a4.org/mark/a4/maintenance/flattire/mvc003f.jpg">

DAP@EPL

(just out of curiousity) what kind of pressure differences you were seeing between cold and hot tires, but I guess the unit compensates for that.

Have you played around with the temperature correction defeat at all? I'm just wondering how high the pressure gets on hot tires.

-Dave Pramanik

George @ BostonAudi

I miss mine, the sensors are only on my summer wheels.

Mark P

ie, I can read off +2PSI and know that that is the change. Lemme look it over again now that I'm more familiar with it. I'll let you know tomorrow and you can check it out then.