GS-Riders International

For more information about the Tire Watch tire pressure monitoring system, please check here: Watching the Tire Pressure . This thread is reporting about a modification to the device, not about its features and functions.


Modification Goals

- To make the Tire Watch controllable from the handle bars.
- To use on-board power, instead of power supply by the button cell.
- To fix the Tire Watch permanent near to the GS instrument cluster.

Modification Works

I removed the round battery cover, the o-ring (moisture seal), and the button cell.



The case screws have special heads. I was successful turning them by using a screw driver with a flat blade of 2 mm width.



First I did the wiring for the remote switches on the circuit board. The contacts which are marked with a small arrow are ground. Therefore only three cables need to be soldered.



One contact ready soldered. I did the other two in the same way. Before I started soldering, I drilled a 3 mm hole on each side of the circuit board, on spots where are no electrical parts or lines. The holes will support holding the cables in place.



Now to the power supply. The pad in the center is minus, the two stand up pins on the side are plus. Both plus pins need to be connected to the plus wire.



Now to the fixture. Parts used are:
- a 5 x 50 mm bolt
- three washers, two nuts
- fabricated a 25 mm long bushing, cut from a steel tube, and covered with heat shrink tube
- clamp approximately 18 mm (which I still had laying around, it's originally from the GS's charcoal canister)





5 mm hole in left corner of the housing for the wire pass-through, on the inside it's sealed with epoxy.



Testing - roger -



to be continued ...

Some delay. The bolt I used for mounting the clamp with the two push buttons is 2 mm too long. The bolt cracked the assembly when I was tightening it. See the lower button



I need to redo this. The glue takes 18 hours for setting.

Remote Control Buttons

The assembly with the buttons is redone, now I got it right:




What parts are needed?
- Two water resistant push buttons, taken from an Albrecht intercom system. They come with certain headsets from this company. I had them still in the drawer. The company Albrecht is known in other parts of the world under the name Alan.
- A Cateye handle bar mounting bracket. For more info see: Handle bar mounting bracket for removable gizmos .

Water resistant push button


Cateye bracket



I removed the quicklock mechanism from the bracket, and 'dremeled' the L-shape to better accommodate the button. Then I sanded the surface of the bracket where appropriate for giving more hold to the epoxy glue.



Here the result:





Electrical Connections

As the next step I temporary mounted the display for determining the required cable lengths. The different wires can be seen below the instruments:



Remember, there are five wires: Red and black for the power, white is for the left button, green for the right one, and yellow is the ground for both buttons.



Now comes the beauty: The Albrecht remote button has a water resistant plug attached to the cable. I just needed to solder the other part of the wires to the white, yellow and green cables from the Tire Watch. Pug-in and ready.



The next one looks a bit messy, but for the insider it's actually not. I while ago I fabricated a strong wire harness. It is leading power straight from the battery to the front of the motorcycle. From there I am driving the fog the lights, the extra horn, the power plug, and some smaller items. I included some spare voltage connectors, so there are still some (currently) redundant cables.

The small pink and black wires are meant for the Tire Watch. They have unswitched power.



The Tire Watch operates on 3 V only. The XSORee Key reduces 12V to 3 V.



I sanded the surface



and with epoxy glued a bracket to it



Bracket altered to suit my mounting location, heat shrink tube for weather protection.



This is the left side under the fairing with the voltage converter in place. The rest 'cable-cleaning' will be done the next time, when I install my last piece of electronic, more to this at another time. With the minuscule draw from the Tire Watch the voltage converter does not even get warm.




Conclusion

The Tire watch is generally in sleeping mode when not in use. In sleeping mode it uses only a tiny amount of power, which should not affect the motorcycle's battery. Pressing of the left button wakes the device up. After about 100 - 500 m riding distance, when it catches the sensor signals, the tire pressures are displayed automatically. After 6 minutes of not getting a sensor signal the unit falls back into sleeping mode. It all works great with the power from the motorcycle and the two remote buttons. I'm am happy with the result.



To my big surprise, I do not need to press the 'on' button! Yep - the Tire Watch switches itself on after the engine is started! Probably Tire Watch electronics interprets the shaking voltage when the bike starts as the wake-up signal. Couldn't be any better.

With this in mind, and knowing that under normal operation (just monitoring the tire pressure) no button pressing is required, the remote buttons actually can be skipped. This as a hint for people who are not comfortable with soldering around the tiny micro-switch contacts on the circuit board: Just solder the two power cables on, which I think can be done via the battery compartment door on the rear. This is really not hard at all. If I knew before that the unit switches itself on with engine start, I would have skipped the remote buttons as well.

May be, if one is interested to watch the tire temperatures.

Button Functions

Left button:
- switches it on
- enters the device into set-up mode

Right button:
- changes in between tire pressures and tire temperatures
- changes the values in set-up mode
- displays time when the unit is off

Both buttons:
- lights the display

If one wants to comfortably switch in between tire pressures and tire temps with an easy to reach button, then one remote button is needed. But once dismantled, if I solder two or three wires for remote control button, that is no big deal then. The idea just attaching some power wires has the beauty of being very little intrusive.

Voltage dropped from 3 V to 2.7 V. Less than 1/2 year in use. My tire watch is happy with 2.7 V, but it displays the low battery warning. The manufacturer company seems to have gone out of business.

The XS0Ree Key has given up completely. Waste of money. I bought an ordinary step down transformer for car use, cost S$ 9.90 / US$ 6.50, and wrapped in in heat shrink tube for watertightness.