TPMS Tools
 

I just wanted to give people a heads up on which TPMS tools work and don't work for our cars (FRS, BRZ).

ATEQ VT30 (Basic Sensor activator) --> Not currently supported (1st Qtr 2013)
ATEQ VT55 (Mid level sensor activator) --> EDIT: Neutron256 reports that VT55 will work with the Toyota protocol

ATEQ QuickSet (TPMS reset tool) --> Supports our cars with latest software

I got the above support dates directly from ATEQ.

Tirerack messed up and forgot to record my TPMS sensor IDs and I had to go to several tire shops to find someone that had a sensor activator that would work on our cars. A local shop that had a Bartech device tripped the sensor using the Toyota protocol. My Subaru dealer didn't even have the tool, they wanted to pull the tires off to get the IDs.

Once I finally got the IDs the ATEQ QuickSet tool made reprogramming the ECU TPMS IDs quick work. It should take less than 5 minutes now to go from my Winter to Summer tires. You program the QuickSet tool with the TPMS IDs for both your Winter and Summer tires using a Windows computer. You disconnect it from the computer and plug it into the OBDII port. Push either the Summer or Winter button. If the light goes from a flashing green to a solid green your done. The Windows software supports up to 4 cars at a time.

The VT55 may not program the ECU, I couldn't tell you because I don't have the OBDII dongle with mine, but it will read the sensors just fine.

Interesting, I stand corrected. I had a local tire dealer try for 15 minutes to read the tire sensors with a VT-55 with the Toyota, Scion and Subaru settings. He swore he had just updated it with the latest firmware. I tried with my VT-30 for about two hours on every setting I could try and I know my device is on the latest published update of the firmware. The VT-30 worked great on my wife's Nissan Murano.

Yep I had no trouble reading my sensors with the VT-55 and I think it had been about a year since I've updated it. They read as Toyota sensors.

Ballpark cost for the tool/license we'd need to reset our own cars? 100 or 500+?

If you have the TPMS Ids of your new tires all you really need is the ATEQ Quickset tool and a windows computer. It will read the TPMS Ids of your current tires and input the new TPMS Ids into your ECU. The ATEQ Quickset is about $150.

So that'll tell me what the OEM/summer tire sensors are so I can write them down and import my winter setup as well? I have the sensors for my winter tires, I just haven't gotten around to doing them yet.

I'm in for an answer to this.

Yep you connect it to the OBDII port and it will read current ID's and let you upload them to your PC. Once you've got the winter and summer ID's you don't even really need to connect it to the PC it has one button for winter, and another for summer.

I'm really surprised that Toyota/Subaru decided to put direct TPMS in these cars, considering the expectations that many owners of these cars will be swapping wheels often. If they just went with an indirect TPMS, there would be no sensors in the wheels.

Other car companies are starting to move back to indirect TPMS, which is a good thing in my opinion. No worries about swapping wheels, no expensive sensors to replace when the batteries die, no need to have a second set of sensors programmed to your vehicle, etc...

I don't understand why they don't make it easier to program the ECU to the sensors, or allow it to store more than one set of sensor codes? Would it be *that* hard to have a button somewhere in the car that would allow the ECU to detect the new sensors and adapt to them?

Indirect isn't without it's downfalls, the biggest being that if all four wheels are roughly equally low in pressure it won't say anything at all.

Actually, indirect TPMS is better than ever before. On my new car, it doesn't matter how many of the tires are equally low in pressure. I could be one or it could be all, and the TPMS will still detect it and alert the driver. Sure, it uses ABS wheel speed sensors to measure changes in rolling diameters, but it doesn't compare one wheel against the others. It measures each independently, which is why it can detect a drop in pressure for any or all wheels separately or together.

This is correct. The only exception is if you are using the tool for more that one car. Then you have to connect it to a PC to switch between vehicles.

If all four tires are low, it can't detect a difference and will never let you know. The whole basis of it is using a difference in wheel speeds (averaged out so it doesn't go off in a corner) to determine if a tire is low. If all four are low there's no difference between wheels.