audia6s

So I was reading OnDeman5 today and into the question I always wanted to ask. Here it states that we are able to check battery life, temperature, and pressure of our tires/tmps sensors with VAS5051 diagnostic tool. Can we do the action with Vag? If so, how? Thanks.

hrc4u

i have all that info in my mmi? why wanna use vcds?

audia6s

What info do you have in MMI? What year is your vehicle?
My 2008 MMI only shows me "Store value" and "Chamge Tires". Your MMI tells you battery level for TPMS sensors?

hrc4u

Ok..thought you meant car battery :-D
..but i can see tire temp and pressure in mmi though :-) but i recall seeing sensor battery level in vcds..hmm.. I have a european 05 btw :-)

audia6s

Hmm, my MMI doesn't show me the pressure which I don't understand why (unless I'm looking in a wrong place) My BMW use to tell me pressure in each tire.

cebo0650

Euro spec cars show the pressure and temp, US/Canada cars do not.

We don't have the required sensors for that. Some have retrofired the needed parts, but it's a bit of work. You need you sensors for each wheel, "antennas" to mount in each wheel well and the associated cabling.

SchwarzS6

That is not quite true, at least in my 2008. A couple of weeks ago I was poking around with VAG-COM and found channels for the 4 tire pressures. The data is there, it is just not displayed for some reason. It is also rather annoying that when a tire is low it does not tell you which tire since the car does have the data. Since this data is available in Europe, perhaps there is some secret way to turn on the pressure display in the MMI.

audia6s

Like I stated earlier in my full version of OnDemand5 it stated that the temperature, pressure per tire, and the battery level can be check with the software. OnDemand5 did not talk about VCDS so I wanted to check if that was possible.

SchwarzS6

Here is some information. I have not tried this because I am concerned about doing something REALLY BAD. But feel free try this and let us all know the results and the exact instructions if you get it to work.

I found this information at: http://a6retrofit.tripod.com/


Hidden menu: C99 reported (http://www.a5oc.com/forums/showthrea...x.html?p=32223) in an A5OC.com thread how you can access a hidden maintenance menu via MMI. (This may require the "real" MMI 2G, it may not work on a Concert/Symphony radio and MMI 3G hidden menu is enabled differently, see below. See here for more on the "real" MMI vs. radios: http://a6retrofit.tripod.com/articles/a4a5realmmi.html).

Apparently you can access this hidden menu by holding down CAR and SETUP for five/six seconds. There are whole host of settings you can access here, like adjusting MMI timings, visible options - apparently you can even adjust the TV blackout speed or remove it. I hear you can also make CAR menu selections appear without speed limit. WARNING! According to reports don't select "Bootloader", it will lock the system in a software update mode without a way out (http://www.a5oc.com/forums/showthrea...x.html?p=38153)... Some general info on the same/similar hidden menu in A6 is here: http://www.motor-talk.de/forum/aktio...7283&ajax=true. If this menu doesn’t work and your MMI version is up to date, you need to enable the menu with the following VAG-COM steps: Head unit controller (07), Adaptation, Channel 8, change 0 to 1, Save.


Enabling tyre pressure monitoring: Since this step includes coding the ABS Brakes module and functionality has not been fully confirmed (although it does seem to work for many), I would recommend caution, but I will mention this as an interesting story. Poster "rlarsen" reports, of Audi A4 B8 (A5 is a close relative), at audiforum.us (TPMS just programming?, http://audiforum.us/b8-platform/1207...ramming-3.html) that tyre pressuring monitoring seems to be enableable via VAG-COM, for certain ABS module revisions at least. If your ABS module rejects this coding, it might not support TPMS. Apparently 1AT ABS module may be required, 1AS may not work (see part number label in service book). Whether or not this is all there is to this, I recommend following-up on the thread above before doing anything, but again - interesting story and potential there. Note: All this applies to the indirect, ABS sensor based TPMS. Direct TPMS with wheel sensors in some markets is different.

First enable CAR menu tyre pressure entry from the MMI hidden menu (see above for how to access the MMI hidden menu in MMI 2G or 3G) or, if your car has an Audi Chorus/Concert/Symphony radio without hidden menu, check for/enable the tyre pressure checkbox in VAG-COM/VCDS coding for module 56 - Radio. Then in module 03 - ABS Brakes, go to Security Access - 16 (popup in VAG-COM/VCDS should show the security code needed), Coding - 07 and bit 3 in byte 1 set to 1. Then in module 17 - Instruments, go to Coding - 07 and bit 0 in byte 4 set to 1. Afterwards power off, wait some time, reset MMI and clear any error codes. You may encounter an initial error and need to reset error codes twice after storing TPMS values via the CAR menu (see your Audi manual on how to operate the tyre pressure monitoring system). To reset MMI, see: How to reset MMI (http://a6retrofit.tripod.com/articles/resetmmi.html).

Note about radio Chorus/Concert/Symphony: To see how this is done on A4/A5/Q5 cars with radio instead of MMI, see here: http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...=278256&page=7.

Note about MMI 3G: Enabling TPMS in the CAR menu is a bit different for MMI 3G than in MMI 2G, see this link: http://audiforum.us/b8-platform/1207...amming-10.html. Apparently you set tires air pressure control to 5 in the MMI 3G hidden menu (see beginning of article on how to access/enable hidden menu) in main/car/carmenuoperation. The link also suggests to enable RDK in main/car/cardevicelist in the hidden menu, but end-result is unconfirmed.

gk1

Audi switched from multiple receivers/antennas (car side) to a single receiver. (Reducing cost) This is why US spec cars do not have the MMI display info like the A8 or euro spec cars.

However the transmitter (wheel side) does have all of the information and it can be read from VCDS. It is in the TPMS control module measuring blocks. (You can't really tell which tire you are reading even though they might be labeled...you have to compare to actual measurements.)

Further cost cutting is seen in Audi's most recent generation of TPMS utilizing the ABS to measure when a tire is low. (I believe GM implemented this in the late 90's.) I supposed one could argue doing without the in-wheel sensors benefits the long term owner too, but I doubt there was any cost savings passed onto the buyers.

US law only dictates that the auto manufacturer indicate when a tire is low, not which tire nor how low.