TST 507 TPMS...A Review

[Rbertalotto]

I ordered a 4 channel/tire Truck System Technologies 507 TPMS tire pressure monitoring system from www.TechnoRV.com . Great price, free shipping and I had it in two days!

PACKAGING:
Nicely done with lots of extra O rings for when you need to change the batteries in the tire sensors in a year or so.
A cigarette lighter cord and a hard wired cord is included.
A dash board mount and a suction cup window mount is included
Three different installation instructions are included. Seems they kept writing instructions to make it easier. The single sheet that looks like the last iteration was the easiest to follow, along with the TST YouTube video. TechnoRV also has a video on their web site to aid in programming.

SET UP / PROGRAMMING:
I suggest you view the number of YouTube videos available (Google Search) before you do anything. The programming is a bit confusing as it uses a relative few buttons to do multiple functions. If you go slow and be deliberate, it is quite easy. If you can't figure it out, this is why God invented 12 year old grand children!

OPERATION:
I only installed it on my pick up truck. I'll order sensors for the trailer once I'm sure it is accurate and robust enough.
Sensors were programmed and installed on the four tires. I did not replace the rubber valve stems with steel as suggested by others. Reports from others is that the sensors are so light they do not add stress to the valve stems. I agree. Time will tell.

The kit is available with standard (you must remove to add air) and "Flow Through sensors that you can add air without removing the sensor. I went with the NON-Flow Through sensors. I'll have to remove them to add air if needed. Time will tell if this was a good decision. But on my truck the valve stems are about 90 degrees perpendicular to the tire and I had concerns that the longer "Flow Through" sensors might get damaged on curbs or when I take the truck on rough roads.

The system came up and started to send PSI and TEMP immediatly. To test it, I lowered the air pressure and raised it with my compressor and in both cases the reported PSI was extremely accurate and the alarm sounded at low and high PSI parameters I set. The temperature is reading the exact same from each tire (37 degrees in their static state)

The interesting thing is the monitor is sitting here in my office, some 100' from the truck, through a number of walls and an aluminum garage door and it is reading fine. This leads me to believe that it will easily work on a relatively long trailer tow vehicle combination.....If not, an amplifier/repeater is available to boost the signal from the trailer.

All in all I'm very impressed with the quality of construction and performance. The monitor has the feel of a well built cell phone. Nice glass or heavy plastic screen, I can't tell which. Brass antenna connections. Very secure power cord plug/jack.

The tire sensors include anti-theft collars that I chose not to use. Maybe I trust folks too much. We'll see

You can read all about it here:

http://www.technorv.com/TST_RV_Tire_Pressure_Monitors_s/110.htm

Hope this helps if someone is thinking about getting a TPMS

[SarahLichtman]

Hi it's Sarah at TST. In that instance, our system would alert you right away. I've never heard of an instance where someone didn't get alerted of that right away. What good would an hour or maybe even 5 minutes do if you lost a tire!? Just make sure your system is running properly by plugging in a repeater if you ever experience signal loss. It's not very expensive and it takes no set up, just plug it in and go.

[hotpepperkid]

There may be a lot of reasons you loose signal. RF interference is likely the largest reason. My guess they use in the area of 430MHZ along with a lot of other things.

[RCMAN46]

BobsYourUncle wrote:
If the sensor reports an immediate loss of pressure, how does that correspond with loss of signal?
I would think that if there is no signal, then the sensor can't report a situation with a tire.

That is the whole issue.

If there is a loss of signal the sensor is not communicating with the monitor thus sending a loss of pressure signal will not be received by the monitor.

It is not a case of no signal. The problem is the signal is not received by the monitor. This can be from distance from sensor to monitor too large, interference from other devices and a host of other reasons.

[BobsYourUncle]

If the sensor reports an immediate loss of pressure, how does that correspond with loss of signal?
I would think that if there is no signal, then the sensor can't report a situation with a tire.

While I agree that a complete wheel loss is unusual, yes it can happen. I had that happen once too. I was pulling a car trailer loaded with a 64 Impala many years ago when one of my wheels passed me as I slowed down for a traffic light. Unusual yes but not impossible.

[fj12ryder]

Dutch_12078 wrote:

BobsYourUncle wrote:
As I follow this thread and read intently every post, I have to comment that I am somewhat puzzled and perhaps even dismayed about the posts regarding up to an hour delay on the signal loss notification.

As one who has experienced 3 catastrophic tire failures and not knowing any of them until much damage was done, I have to wonder why this is perhaps considered "normal".

Does this not rather defeat the purpose of the TPMS?

A lot can happen in an hour. Pick up a piece of road shrapnel and a tire is gone in minutes, not hours.

Makes me wonder why they would be this way. It seems like this should be classified as a bug in the system as opposed to designed that way.......

The TST TPMS, like most others, alerts to a loss of pressure as soon as it's detected. The delay, which is not unique to TST, refers only to the loss of signal. If a complete wheel were to come off undetected by the driver for instance, with no loss of pressure, none of the popular TPMS will report that until some delay period has passed. Is an hour too long? Is 15 minutes too long? Since all of the TPMS sensors only "phone home" once every 5 minutes or so when an alert condition doesn't exist to preserve battery life, some amount of delay is unavoidable. That runaway wheel could be long gone before you're alerted to an issue, regardless of the TPMS brand.

I think you're kind of missing the point. The scenario you've described would be pretty unusual, and frankly I don't consider it very likely to happen. It can happen, but much less likely than a plain ole flat tire.

However, if you lose the sensor signal, which is fairly common IME, you might as well not have the TPMS on the particular tire/s that are no longer detected. A short delay is certainly to be expected, an hour cannot be termed a short delay. I am not too happy with an intermittent TPMS, just as I wouldn't be too happy with an intermittent oil pressure gauge, temperature gauge, or even a radio.

[Rbertalotto]

I'd rather 5 minutes than an hour......Might be able to go back and find the tire if only 5 minutes

[Dutch_12078]

BobsYourUncle wrote:
As I follow this thread and read intently every post, I have to comment that I am somewhat puzzled and perhaps even dismayed about the posts regarding up to an hour delay on the signal loss notification.

As one who has experienced 3 catastrophic tire failures and not knowing any of them until much damage was done, I have to wonder why this is perhaps considered "normal".

Does this not rather defeat the purpose of the TPMS?

A lot can happen in an hour. Pick up a piece of road shrapnel and a tire is gone in minutes, not hours.

Makes me wonder why they would be this way. It seems like this should be classified as a bug in the system as opposed to designed that way.......

The TST TPMS, like most others, alerts to a loss of pressure as soon as it's detected. The delay, which is not unique to TST, refers only to the loss of signal. If a complete wheel were to come off undetected by the driver for instance, with no loss of pressure, none of the popular TPMS will report that until some delay period has passed. Is an hour too long? Is 15 minutes too long? Since all of the TPMS sensors only "phone home" once every 5 minutes or so when an alert condition doesn't exist to preserve battery life, some amount of delay is unavoidable. That runaway wheel could be long gone before you're alerted to an issue, regardless of the TPMS brand.

[RCMAN46]

The Pressure Pro system alerts loss of signal in about 15 minutes.

The sensors on most systems sends a pressure and other data about every 5 minutes. (note this is routine data and not alarm data such as low pressure. That is sent by most systems in 5 seconds or less.)

As such a loss of signal would take at least 10 minutes before the receiver could be sure it has lost communication with a sensor.

The Pressure Pro has an additional useful feature during setup of the system. You can get signal strength of each sensor. If you have a sensor with a low signal strength then a repeater or external antenna may be needed. Also with the signal strength you can experiment where the best location of the repeater and antenna should be.

I found I could not find a location that was suitable with a repeater. Pressure Pro allowed me to return the repeater and supplied the external antenna which gave me good signals from all 10 of my sensors.

[BobsYourUncle]

As I follow this thread and read intently every post, I have to comment that I am somewhat puzzled and perhaps even dismayed about the posts regarding up to an hour delay on the signal loss notification.

As one who has experienced 3 catastrophic tire failures and not knowing any of them until much damage was done, I have to wonder why this is perhaps considered "normal".

Does this not rather defeat the purpose of the TPMS?

A lot can happen in an hour. Pick up a piece of road shrapnel and a tire is gone in minutes, not hours.

Makes me wonder why they would be this way. It seems like this should be classified as a bug in the system as opposed to designed that way.......

[fj12ryder]

I think one guy on here mentioned his TPMS that registered a signal loss in less than 10 minutes. I can't remember who it was or what make TPMS it was. Hopefully he'll post back.

I can see that an immediate signal would be a pain, but I would think a 5-10 minute delay would be workable. If they can set the time delay for an hour, I wouldn't think setting it for less would be that hard to do.

[fcooper]

fj12ryder wrote:
He has been on the forum before and he says there is no issue as the system is designed to work that way. I asked if he didn't think an hour delay between loss of signal and notification of loss of signal was a bit excessive, but got no reply other than that was the way it was supposed to work.

It's not really my problem alone, it's the problem of everyone who owns a TST TPMS. It's just that not everyone is completely aware of how the system works.

I don't believe that it's just a TST problem. Within the past 12 months, I've read a thread (maybe on another forum) that named one or more other TPMS systems that have a similar delay when radio contact is lost. I've searched and can not find the thread now.

With the TST507 and repeater, I've never experienced the problem on the highway.

If I move the monitor to the toad without removing the motorhome sensors from the monitor programming and drive away in the toad after the monitor has begun to register the motorhome tire pressures, it will be approximately 1 hour before I get the lost signal alert.

I would like an immediate signal if the signal is lost, but in all fairness the TST performs much better than the Tire Sentry I used for many years.

Maybe some other folks with non-TST TPMS systems will post here and let us know how their system handles a loss of signal.

Fred

[fj12ryder]

He has been on the forum before and he says there is no issue as the system is designed to work that way. I asked if he didn't think an hour delay between loss of signal and notification of loss of signal was a bit excessive, but got no reply other than that was the way it was supposed to work.

It's not really my problem alone, it's the problem of everyone who owns a TST TPMS. It's just that not everyone is completely aware of how the system works.

[dryfly]

fj12ryder,


Now I understand your situation. I'm not sure I have ever noticed a discrepancy like that in getting dissimilar readings on my tires. That would be really difficult to determine unless you saw a big difference such as when you start driving initially and when the tires heat up and increase temperature.

Granted it may happen and I don't know it.

Have you talked to the guy that owns TST? He is great and I'm sure he will work with you on your problem. Please keep us posted.

[RCMAN46]

pawpaw47 wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:
I like my TST system but I don't like what I feel is an excessive time delay between when the monitor loses the signal from a sensor, and when the monitor notifies you that the signal has been lost. An hour is a long time to be without contact and not know it.

I had the same problem with mine, but I spoke with the techs at TST about it and they suggested installing their repeater. That totally fixed my issues. You may want to talk with them about it.

Happy travels!

I installed a remote antenna that I had left over from my Pressure Pro (big mistake replacing the Pressure Pro with the TST).

The antenna does not require a power source and can be installed anywhere. I mounted mine at the rear of the truck on the trailer hitch. Do not know if it has solved all of my problems as due to the one hour notification I could still have a system that is communicating erratically and if a signal makes at least once every 50 minutes I would never know I have an unreliable system.

[fj12ryder]

CJW8 wrote:
With the delay in loss of signal, you may not know if you lose a wheel on the highway until a lot of damage has been done. This actually happened to me. Fortunately, the person following me came around me and signaled me to stop. I don't know how often the controller polls the sensors but they should have made it user adjustable such that after X number of failed receipts from a sensor, then it triggers a lost sensor.

Yeah, I think they dropped the ball in that respect. An hour is just too long.