fj12ryder wrote:
I have the old style monitor, so I can't comment about the new style. But with mine, the monitor will alert if it loses contact with a sensor, and will beep every time the missing sensor is detected as the monitor rotates through the tires. But it beeps only as long as the missing sensor is displayed, and stops when the monitor moves to the next tire. And it takes an hour for it to alert to a missing sensor. I know this to be true, because of a series of events.
Annoying, but better than being unaware that you have sensors that aren't working correctly.
Thanks for reporting back. It was helpful. My newer one acts different.
Something to add to the mix. There appears to be a difference between a sensor not working correctly and a sensor not reading at all at power up. I'll explain some.
I had a slow leak on the truck left front tire. It turned out to be a valve stem mounting leak. It would loose about 3 psi a month sitting in the barn. To test it was not the sensor leaking, I took the sensor off and capped the stem. The leak still happened just the same so I then knew it was not the sensor O-ring leaking on the stem. Water air bubbles leaking the stem at the rim confirmed the issue.
When I power up the controller, it scans for every tire location that was programed. The sensors come alive as slightly different times but after a few minutes they are all up and displaying. When I removed the one sensor on the left front during my test, that position came up blank all the time, even when towing down the road. I never got an alarm that location was missing, it knew it was never there from power up and the system would jump over that location and go onto the next.
When I had my tire blow out on the camper, that sensor read pressure upon power up and the location displayed it when the tire was still usable. When the blow out happened, the sensor was still alive and sent an alarm the pressure dropped to zero. The sensor on other good tire on the same side of the camper that got beat up, flew off onto the side of the road somewhere. Since the sensors are time sync'ed to read, the sensor may have flew off between the time to read signal when it came up. Since there was no sensor to send a 0 psi or any psi signal, sort of like a battery going dead, I never got an alarm.
It appears, TST has changed the program from the older style to the newer style. Maybe due to complaints from customers that the constant beep alarming you reported when the sensor that was there stopped working.
Thinking about this, ideally the controller has a message at least that stays after the 1st beep on a separate screen section, that when a sensor that was present on power up, lost signal. Again back to when you power up, it was working. On my system, if the sensor was there upon power up, the display reads the last value when it lost signal. After some time period of no updates, ( not sure how long, 15 to 20 min) that location goes blank. Again no message or beep, just blank but it takes time before it blanks. So I scan the monitor every so often to make sure all are OK.
I do know when a sensor never works upon I power up, as it will never display. I get no alarm, but if I look at the display, that location is missing a pressure/temp, then I know I have a problem with the sensor in that location. I always look to see all the pressures are up before I head out, so I know they all work at least at the start.
