Solving my truck’s TPMS sensor problem with the help of an RTL-SDR dongle

Re:Solving my truck’s TPMS sensor problem with the help of a... by tzs on Monday August 22, 2022 @09:16PM (#32559416)

To elaborate on the range of these things that others have mentioned, I too am seeing people's sensors from fairly far away.

I've got an RTL-SDR running rtl_433 on an RPi sitting in my living room, and I regularly see TPMS sensors from at least 6 different vehicles. The sensors identify as Renault, Schrader, Abarth 124 Spider, Schrader-EG53MA4, Citroen, and Ford.

For the Schrader ones I see enough different IDs that I think I'm seeing more than one car, so I'm probably seeing a few more than 6 different vehicles.

The antenna, which is just the little few inch thing long that came with the RTL-SDR, is about 85 feet from the street in front of my house, 60 feet from a dead end gravel road that runs by the side of my house, 113 feet and 116 feet from where my nearest two neighbors park, and 165 feet from where each of the next two nearest neighbors park.

The Citreon pressure is around 125 kPa, which is about half of what nearly everything else, so I'm curious what kind of vehicle that one is.

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Re:Solving my truck’s TPMS sensor problem with the help of a... by dougg3 on Monday August 22, 2022 @10:15PM (#32559810)

I'm the author of this post. I don't know why I had so much trouble picking up my own sensors. I agree, I've seen a lot of people say they can pick them up from pretty far away too. I'm still not sure about my antenna situation, but I just picked up a couple of Citroen sensors from a car driving by (~75 ft away) and they reported 130 and 131 kPa. I also saw one that was reporting 123 kPa during one of my drives while troubleshooting. Although my own "Citroen" sensors are definitely reporting the correct pressures, I'm thinking maybe there's another model that reports half of the actual pressure or something.

I'm also curious why they report a manufacturer of "Citroen". Isn't that a French automobile manufacturer? I wonder if someone originally observed this protocol on a Citroen car, but it's really just one of the main protocols used by the big TPMS sensor manufacturers like Schrader. I really doubt the sensors on my Dodge Ram are made by Citroen...

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Re:Solving my truck’s TPMS sensor problem with the help of a... by GravitasFailure on Tuesday August 23, 2022 @12:01AM (#32560330)

Both Dodge and Citröen are owned by Stellantis, so they're probably sharing some code or a supplier between the two brands.

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Re:Solving my truck’s TPMS sensor problem with the help of a... by fomine3 on Tuesday August 23, 2022 @02:20AM (#32561084)

FCA (Dodge) and PSA (Citroen) merger was started in 2019 so it's after the vehicle (2009) was sold.

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Re:Solving my truck’s TPMS sensor problem with the help of a... by vel0city on Monday August 22, 2022 @11:05PM (#32560072)

I'm not too sure about the accuracy of the sensor IDs. I've supposedly seen several abarth spiders pass by my house but I've never actually seen one in person around me, they're not common near me.

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