SMART TIRE PRESSURE MONITORING SYSTEM Technical Field of the invention

This invention relates to reading and monitoring of a vehicles tire pressure and temperature on a smart device such as smart phone or a smart tablet.

Background

Given the importance of tire pressure with respect to road safety, there are several solutions that exists today to assit vehicle owners to keep their vehicle tires inflated properly. However, all the tire pressure reading and monitoring solutions has below limitations:

• Vehicle owners must be physically cióse to the vehicle and sometimes with ignition key turned on for the pressure valué to be displayed on dashboard screen.

• No asynchronous notificaron mechanism is present in case tire pressure falls below critical level or a fíat tire is detected.

• There's no way for a single user to monitor all the vehicles that user owns in a single centralized location.

• In case of trucks where trailers are added and removed dynamically, current tire pressure monitoring solutions don't support monitoring of tires that are dynamically added/removed.

Summary of the invention

All the above limitations are overeóme by the present invention, which provides a system comprising of hardware to read the pressure valúes of tires and a companion mobile application where the pressure valúes are displayed along with other features. The hardware has a pressure sensor and the hardware is placed inside the tire anchored to the air stem valve. The companion appilcation is configured to get the pressure readings of a vehicle from the tires with hardware installed. In case the pressure valué falls below mínimum threshold, the hardware will send a asynchronous notificaron to the companion app which in turn will display an alert on the mobile device.

The companion mobile application also lets a user track ANY number of vehicles, a feature that is missing in the existing producís. Also for a given vehicle, a user can add and remove ANY number of tires dynamically. The mobile application takes care of linking the appropriate hardware sensors to the right vehicle tires.

Brief description of the drawing

• FIG 1. Shows the Smart Tire Monitoring System according to this invention.

• FIG 2. Shows the series of steps involved in adding a new vehicle and configure its tires to be monitored for pressure and temperature.

• FIG 3 Shows the application interface to monitor tire pressure of more than one vehicle.

• FIG 4 Shows the application notification feature in case a tire is fíat due to puncture.

Detailed description of the prefered embodiments

Referring to FIG 1. can be seen that the Smart Tire Pressure Monitoring System comprises of a hardware portion (1) that is anchored to air stem valve (2) and seated under the rim (3) of a wheel. There will be one hardware sensor per tire that needs to be monitored. Totally five hardware sensors (1) (4) (5) (6) (7) are monitored in the referenced figure. These sensors communicate wirelessly to the application portion (8) of the STPMS system running on a smartphone or tablet where the pressure valué (9) and temperature valué (10) are displayed for each of the five tires referenced in the figure.

Referring to FIG 2. can be seen the series of steps involved in adding a new vehicle and configuring the tires of that vehicle for pressure and temperature monitoring. A new vehicle is added from home screen (FIG 2a.) by tapping (11) add a new vehicle button. This takes to the next screen (FIG 2b.) where vehicle's ñame (12), total tires in that vehicle (13) and the type of the vehicle (14) are entered. This is followed by a screen (FIG 2c.) where list of tires (15) ( number of tires shown is based on the number of tires configured on the previous screen ) is displayed on the left column and all the nearby hardware sensors (16) detected are displayed on the right column. Associating a tire with a sensor is a simple drag and drop gesture (17). At the time of association (FIG 2d.), recommended tire pressure (18) can be set and also a ñame can be assigned (19) to that tire in the displayed popup (20). Once the association is made, the association can be destroyed (21) if required and the process is carried ovér until all the tires are configured (FIG 2e.). Oncethe setup is completed, home screen (FIG 2f.) is displayed with the newly created vehicle (22) which can be tapped (23) to start seeing the pressure and temperatures valúes of the tires configured (FIG 2g.). At any point more tires need to be added or removed, the whole is process followed via edit option in FIG 1 (7). This ability to add/remove vehicles any time, and to add/remove tires any time, makes STPMS a very unique solution comparecí to traditional methodologies.

Referring to FIG 3. can be seen that the STPMS will allow monitoring of tires of more than one vehicle (24) (25) (26) (27) (28) from one location. From this screen a new vehicle can be added dynamically by pressing the "Add Vehicle" (29) button. If a vehicle needs to be removed or to add more tires to a vehicle, the edit icón (30) is used which will re-initiate the sequence of screens in FIG 2.

Referring to FIG 4. can be seen the asynchronous notification feature of the STPMS. If the tire pressure goes below (31) or above (32) certain threshold of manufacturer recommended valué, STPMS will asynchronously (without user intervention) display an alert message (31) (32) (33) on the phone screen. An alert message (33) is also displayed if a tire is fíat. This notification feature will work as long as the phone is within 150-200 meters from the sensors.

CLAIMS

I claim

1. A Smart Tire Pressure Monitoring System that comprises of sensor based hardware and mobile application running on a smartphone or tablet to check and monitor tire pressure and temperature inside one or more tires wirelessly without being inside of a vehicle and without turning on a vehicle's power.

2. The Smart Tire Pressure Monitoring System of claim 1 where in an asynchronous notification feature to alert a user without any user involvement if one or more monitored tire is fíat or is below/above certain threshold of manufacturer recommended pressure.

3. The Smart Tire Pressure Monitoring System of claim 1 where in the application is used as a one single place to track all the vehicles whose tires need to be monitored for pressure and temperature.

4. The Smart Tire Pressure Monitoring System of claim 1 & 3 wherein a vehicle can be added or removed any time from the system dynamically.

5. The Smart Tire Pressure Monitoring System of clain 1, 3 & 4 wherein the number of tires to be monitored in a vehicle can be added or removed any time dynamically.

6. A Smart Tire Pressure Monitoring System substantially as herein described with reference to the accompanying drawing.