Anyone use a CARCHET TPMS

Dano1955 wrote:
Not recommended regardless of Amazon ratings.

Amazon is having quite the problem right now with reviews and ratings. Lots of people won't buy something without reviews, or without LOTS of reviews, so sellers either give away product for "unbiased" (yea, right) reviews or there are allegations that they are buying fake reviews.

That's unfortunate, because I like Amazon and used to be able to determine the quality of a product based upon reviews. Now its much more difficult unless there are literally hundreds or thousands of reviews.

Final Update:

These are going back to Amazon for refund. Epic Fail.

There is no bi-directional (or continuous or frequent or every now and then) polling on these between sensors and the receiver/display. There is only sensor to display notification and it is ONE TIME only when change is noticed. If the display/receiver is in a vehicle and the vehicle is off, IT NEVER RECEIVES A CHANGE SIGNAL. It continues on it's merry way displaying the last known status from when it was powered on.

I removed a sensor from my RV with the truck on, the display alarmed with zero pressure on that tire. Put the sensor back on, the display stopped alarming and updated with correct psi.

Did the same exact thing with the truck off and no power to the display, and it never updated. Kept showing the last known status for all four tires. I drove away from the storage lot where I keep my RV and carried the sensor with me in the truck for two days. The display never updated. Still showing last know status from when it powered down.

Not recommended regardless of Amazon ratings.

That sure doesn't sound good. Please keep us updated on how it goes. I was thinking about getting something different to replace my TST system.

Well, here's the thing. Over 24 hours after moving the sensors to my RV from the truck. The pressure indicators never changed so unless the tires on the RV are EXACTLY the same tire for tire as my TV, then the display never updated.

And still hasn't. As far as I know, the display doesn't even know the sensors are 8 miles away in the storage lot.

Going to go back to storage lot and check/replace sensor batteries just to see what the results are. If nothing changes, these will be going back to Amazon. But even so, the display should do something besides flash and alarm the 2 rear tires (fronts are showing fine) if it loses contact. Can't find anywhere that says how often the display unit/sensors poll each other.

Will make sure to note that

The thing I'm very interested in is the response time to a lost signal.

If you leave the monitor on and drive away from the trailer that has the sensors mounted on it, how long does it take before the monitor notifies you that you have lost the sensor signals. Some of the TPMS's can take up to an hour to notify you that you've lost contact. I am curious about the length of time it takes for the CARCHET TPMS to notify you of a lost sensor signal.

Any information would be greatly appreciated. TIA.

For everyone's interest, my opinion...

Received these today and put them on my 2500 Ram long bed for testing. They seem to be of good quality and do what they are supposed to do as far as monitoring and alarming for pressure and temperature.

Slight problem though. You can set a high and low pressure but it is common to all 4 wheels. Since I'm running 80 in the rears and 65 in the fronts, any meaningful (non-extreme) high or low pressure setup is moot as it causes all four wheels to alarm either high or low depending on what the setting is I've chosen.

Example: I set the high pressure to 70 based on the front tires normal 65 lbs, then I set the low pressure to 60. This causes the alarms for the rear tires to register and flash as if they are low. On the second setting I set according to the rear 80 psi normal running pressure. High pressure to 85 based on 80 psi norm and low pressure to 75. This causes the front tires to alarm and flash as if they are high,

So on my truck at least these will not work. However, I bought these to put on my 5th wheel tires which all run with the same pressure, so I will check them in the next couple of days to make sure they will work from the cab of my truck while hooked up.

agesilaus wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:
No matter how quick they change, you have no business taking your eyes off the road to check your tire pressure display. That is why they have the alert alarm. And what are the chances you're going to glance down in time to catch the tire going flat before the TPMS does.

Do us all a favor and keep your eyes on the road where they belong.

Do you look at the vehicles gauges? You know temperature and maybe fuel level? The idea is to be able to quickly glance at a gauge and get the needed info.

But you can't quickly glance at something like the tire pressure display with 4-6 tires and get any meaningful data in just a glance. You can, however, glance at the gauges and see where they are, one of the reasons gauges work better than numbers.

This is the type of thinking that people who are texting use: it only takes a second to glance at the screen, which usually turns into several seconds. Which is too much time away from the road.

fj12ryder wrote:
No matter how quick they change, you have no business taking your eyes off the road to check your tire pressure display. That is why they have the alert alarm. And what are the chances you're going to glance down in time to catch the tire going flat before the TPMS does.

Do us all a favor and keep your eyes on the road where they belong.

Do you look at the vehicles gauges? You know temperature and maybe fuel level? The idea is to be able to quickly glance at a gauge and get the needed info.

agesilaus wrote:
How fast the monitor cycles thru the different tires has nothing to do with the sample rate.
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That may be true, but if you have to look at the monitor for 2 minutes to see what the tire pressure is on all 4 tires is, you have a problem. I do not want to take my eyes off the road for that long. And seeing that one tire has dropped from 82 psi to 75 psi for no obvious reason is very important if you want to catch that nail in the tire before you have a blowout. So to me, being able to do a quick scan of the tire pressures is very important.

As I stated the system can be setup to only cycle thru tires with sensors. Mine cycles thru 6 tires in about 20 seconds, not 2 min.

Also even if a display shows all tires does not guarantee that the data is 'new' data. Generally data sent from the sensor is stored in memory and if the sensor stops sending data, old (stale) data is displayed for a long time, maybe 1 hr. Simple test with that new system is to move the monitor a 1/2 mile away from the sensor and see how long it takes for the display to go blank. If seeing data is critical, then knowing how fresh and reliable that data is and/or system limitations should also be critical.

Along the same lines, temp readings with external sensors are almost worthless with the sensor spinning around in the ambient air. I use internal sensors on the trailer and have a much better chance of detecting hot bearings, dragging brake shoes or inoperative brakes, issues that can contribute to tire/wheel failures.