TPMS sensor ID’s don’t match

There are some of question and answer from Autel forum

Question:

I need to know what I’m missing here. I’m using my TS401 TPMS tool to read the sensor ID’s for VDO Redi-sensors and it shows me a 9 digit code, so I get the codes in order to register the sensor ID’s into a 2008 Toyota Tacoma using my Autel Maxidas Scanner.

When I get to the sensor registration screen to type in the sensor ID’s I am only showing 7 zeros where I put in the new ID’s, but the new ID’s are 9 digits long. I tried the first 7 digits and the sensors were not recognized by the vehicle (I could not get them to activate), so I tried the last 7 digits and the same result.

Am I missing something here? Why does the TS401 give me a 9 digit number and the Maxidas is only asking for a 7 digit ID. Is there a different “7 digit” ID on the sensor itself that differs from what the TS401 tool is reading?

Anyone been through this and figured out the problem???

Answer: Is your TS401 displaying Hex or Decimal.  It will give you a h or a d after the ID number.  To change it, it is the settings. Does your ID have letters in it, if yes, then it is displaying hexadecimal.  Hex will contain numbers from 0-9 and A-F.  Toyota’s use hexadecimal ID codes.  Hope this is your problem. Can you report back your findings, thanks

Question:

Thank you very much for your reply. Here’s the story. My customer showed up for another issue this morning, so I looked into your suggestion and you were exactly right. My tool was set to read Decimal so I switched it to Hexadecimal and read all of the sensor ID’s. Sure enough it gave me the 7 digit ID’s that I needed to enter into the vehicle using my Autel Maxidas scanner.  After entering the ID’s and driving the vehicle, two of the sensors activated and gave me the tire pressure, unfortunately the remaining three sensor still didn’t activate which makes me believe those three sensors are bad??  The sensors are VDO Redi-Sensors which were installed by an online tire dealer when I bought a complete set of new tires & rims all mounted and balanced, ready to install.

Now that I have these results I am able to determine that the sensor ID’s that the tire company sent me were in decimal format, and when I used my Autel TS401 tool to read the sensor ID’s I got the same numbers so I figured I had the correct ID’s to program into the vehicle.  Now that I know, thanks to you, that I need the Hexadecimal ID I will always remember it.

Thanks again for helping me with this mystery, I’m sure there are a lot of people that know about these details, but I wasn’t one of them. I now need to figure out the best option to get all of the sensors working. Perhaps a new set of OEM sensors would be the best option. The tire company is also waiting for me to call them back with the outcome of this issue. I know there are several companies out there that make replacement TPMS sensors , but after these final results I’m very reluctant to use any of them.

Answer:

Your welcome, glad everything worked out.  I had used VDO sensors in the past and I didn’t have any problems with them.  If you use Schrader, TRW, and Dill you shouldn’t have any problems.  I had many ones that customers brought from Autozone fail within a year, they were Duralast ones.