Monitoring vehicle and trailer tire pressures in real-time saves you time, money, and lives since driving with under-inflated tires increases your risk for dangerous events like:
- Tire failures
- Less tread life
- Less fuel efficiency
We’ve integrated Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) into Valarm Tools Cloud. This Industrial IoT application allows you to monitor the tire pressure and tire temperature on any tires in real-time. These sensors screw onto each tire and wirelessly send the latest information to the TPMS base unit via radio. The TPMS base unit then connects to a Valarm sensor hub / connector device via RS-232. The TPMS is just 1 of many sensors and factors that you can monitor with Valarm. This article is a follow-up to the general vehicle, truck, and trailer tracking story with a bunch of sensors for monitoring things like presence of cargo, doors opening / closing, water or fluid presence. Here we’ll specifically focus on Valarm’s support for TPMS with vehicles like commercial equipment, RVs, trucks, motorcycles, or fifth wheels.
In the image on the right you’ll see the Doran Tire Pressure Monitoring System components highlighted in the red boxes, from left to right you’ve got:
- A wheel with a tire pressure sensor installed – easy, portable demo borrowed from a baby stroller! 🙂
- TPMS programming device for telling the TPMS system which wheel’s where on your vehicles / trailers
- TPMS sensor modules that screw onto the tire valves and send tire pressure and temperature information to the TPMS hub
- The TPMS hub that wirelessly connects to the TPMS sensor modules
- The RS-232 sensor adapter that connects to the TPMS hub and the Valarm compatible GSM sensor hub that sends all of the geo-tagged, mobile data to Valarm Tools Cloud in real-time via cellular network
For configuring the Tire Pressure Management System on Valarm Tools Cloud – tools.valarm.net click your Valarm device with the TPMS in the Device Manager. In the screenshot on the left you’ll see we’re at the device details page for Valarm Vehicle 1. You’ll see a TPMS button in the upper right, highlighted with a red oval in this screenshot. After you click the TPMS button you’ll get something like the image below where you can configure your TPMS.
In the TPMS window on the left you’ll see where you can enable the system. You’ll also need the ID of your Yoctopuce RS-232 Sensor Adapter, which you can get from the Configure Yocto Hub screen on the device details page. There’s a dialog box here for inputting how many tire sensors are being monitored on your device, in this case there are 6. There’s a space for notes, where you can put any text you’d like. Here you’ll see we entered the TPMS model we’re using – the Doran 360MTR TPMS unit.
Close-ups of the tire pressure + temperature sensors that screw onto your tire valves. Each has a unique ID on it that you’ll use with the Doran TPMS programmer remote control
In the TPMS window above you’ll see the current tire status for each of your tires with:
- Tire number
- Latest status of tire pressure (e.g., low or high)
- Temperature of the tire (in fahrenheit & celsius)
- Whether or not the tire has a fast leak
- High temp warning – whether or not the tire is too hot
- Current signal status
- Last reported date & time
Valarm Tools Cloud map of a vehicle with the Doran 360MTR Tire Pressure Management (TPMS) system seen above
Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about this or any other remote monitoring / telemetry. We’ll help you choose, configure, install and deploy systems like this on your fleets of vehicles. Whether your fleet vehicles are trucks or trailers for cleaning with industrial equipment like vacuums, pumps, or package courier delivery, or other moving assets that need Industrial IoT solutions, we can train you and your teams to get this information into your systems via our APIs.
Have a look at our Customer Stories as well as our Web Dashboards pages for stories on how Valarm sensor and monitoring solutions are used around the world.
