Tire Temperature System
 

Hey FT,
I'm an EE and I've been developing this kit for my own car. It's to know when your tires are up to operating temp. Is this something anyone else would be interested in?


Here are the features of the kit:

• Four IR sensors
• Narrow 10deg sensor field of view for sampling tire sections
• Large 1 1/12 by 2 1/2 inch display
• Weather resistant; sensors can get wet without being ruined.
• Removable lens cap if they need cleaning or replacement
• Extra protective lenses
• Does both fahrenheit and celsius
• You can adjust the emissivity of each sensor (different materials reflect light at differing rates)
• Quality harnesses
• DC supply is designed for difficult automotive environments with large current dumps and voltage spikes

The installation is straight forward. You drill a small hole in the wheel arch liner for the sensor to poke through. Top center is best to account for changes in tire angle.


If anyone is interested just send me a PM or email me at mikes at ntisys.com

http://sven.signull.com/~mikes/TTS/D...otus_small.jpg http://sven.signull.com/~mikes/TTS/Sensors_small.jpg http://sven.signull.com/~mikes/TTS/harness_small.jpg

Not bad. My previous car, Cobalt SS turbocharged, had a feature similar to this built in. However, my annoyance with it was that I had to reprogram it every time I rotated my tires. It was a PITA. I take it this system will require the same?

These appear to measure the surface temp of the tires with a sensor mounted in the wheel well, so no.

Excellent idea! I thought of this years ago.
My idea was to use a linear line scanning sensor.
As the wheel rotated, you could get a complete temperature map of the entire tire.
This would be extremely helpful setting up your suspension at the track.

Now F1 is using the exact system. You can even see the techs watching the tire temperature maps while racing.
You can see if the suspension is setup wrong, if a tire is failing, or if you flat spot a tire.

How many sensors could your system support?
Maybe three per tire?
Can it log data? If so, for how long?
What did you use as a microcontroller?

A few years ago on iwsti there was some discussion of making a system that had an array of sensors and told you if you had the correct camber settings for a given situation.

Are there plans for Inner, Middle, and Outer temps?

price?

i'd love a system that did this plus real time PSIs.

10x more useful to us than the generally useless TPMS.

IR tire temps aren't really that accurate.....the correct way is with a probe just under the surface of the tire...that gives a much more accurate reading than the surface via IR that can be much different than a probe reading...this is why all top teams use probe testers....

Sure its better than nothing, but distracting the driver with more data isn't neccesarily a good idea either.... Getting accurate tire temps and hot PSI is an excellent tuning tool to help you find the last little bit of performance out of your setup....it also shows weaknesses in your setup-driving style as well....

I would love that! Please let us know if you're trying to sell your concept.

I have the 4 sensor kit for sale, send me an email (mikes at ntisys.com) and I can give you a quote for however long you need your harnesses.


A 3 sensor per corner, that does inner center and outer contact patches, should be available soon. I'm also working on CAN bus/network support, but that's a few months off.

Multiple sensors per tire and logging would make it a useful suspension set-up tool. Pricing will determine if it is practicle or just a curiosity.

bump

any updates? Progress?

Well if he hasnt sold any, it isnt from a lack of trying.

He has posted on the Dodge viper forum, modded mustangs, SCCA forums, Toyobaru, MazdaRoadster, Corvette, Lotus, Audi, Imprezza, etc....

He needs to get this in front of road racers like:

SCCA forums
Improved touring forums
NASA Forums

and so on and so forth.

It IS true that the probe is better, but for the purposes of setting up your camber to maximize the tread you can set your camera to also pickup the screen and watch play back of surface temps across the tread immediately after corner exit and onto the straight. For folks who don't have a helper in the Hot-Pits to get a probe in the tire immediately after coming off track this can be useful.

This could also provide:

• Realtime data of surface temps due to cornering load as it compares to camber and tire pressure; AKA tire carcass roll.
• The amount of cooling the surface sees from corner exit (hottest), down the straight to just before the next braking zone (coldest).
• Driver insight in real time such that if the driver has a car that struggles with tire temps (too hot) he can easily use this realtime data to help drive in a manner to reduce over heating the tires and/or track which corners or braking zones are the absolute hardest and then adjust only in those areas to minimize a loss in lap time while "'maintaining" the tires. This could be an effective tool in Endurance racing.

The OP should post up a booth at the 25 hour of Thunderhill race and see if he gets any takers. Needs to be a sold a complete package, a "boxed solution". Nothing hokey-pokey.

Hey guys. I'm still offering the kits. Been a good season, no issues with the kit so far. And still have a few on hand if anyone is interested.

r_c makes some good points and I think we're of the same mindset. I'm developing a tool, not some snake oil. It's a data collection tool, not a magic do everything better than everything else box. Viz., it can provide some very useful information in certain areas, if those are the areas you are interested in.

Some pics of the kit in my own car just to give you as sense that its a complete boxed solution and nothing mickey moused.

Nice! Spec of said race car :)

Thanks :)

Here are a few things the kit has done for me personally besides it's obvious basic use in telling you when a tire is up to temp:

There can be asymmetries left to right. In my Exige, because the cat is close to the drivers rear tire, that tire runs 30 deg hotter than the passenger side rear. Therefore, this corner gets greasy first in the OEM setup.

Also, it's allowed me to see the affect the forward mounted oil coolers have on bringing tires up to temp and keeping them there. A lot of people have decided to run a single cooler to save weight, but this adds another asymmetry. And the tire is "bathed" in ~10 deg cooler air which hastens the tire shedding its cornering temp.