How does the TPMS work on our Audis
 

I have a '05 C6 4.2Q without TMPS.

I once rode in my friend's Acura MDX and his TPMS would show the realtime tire pressure monitoring of all 4 tires.

I tried testing this on a '08 loaner A4 with TPMS but could not find the menu showing the actual tire pressures. All I could find was a "Tire Pressure Set" menu where you could store the tire pressure of the car.

Just curious on how the TPMS works on the C6.

Is it just an alarm system going off if the tire pressure falls below a set number or can you see the real time tire pressure of the tires?

Nowadays with my tires getting older, it seems that I am loosing pressure faster than before and It is pretty stressing to keep on measuring with a digital meter.

-A C6 Owner without TPMS-

On mine I just get a warning when the pressure falls below a set number. Doesn't tell me exactly which tire or the actual pressure. To make it work right I have to check the pressures manually and then go into the menus and "store" it.

Mine is a very basic '06 A6 3.2Q though, so I'm not sure if its just my model.

Only the A8s displayed actual PSI in MMI. A6 just low warning.

05s initially displayed pressure on all 5 tires (spare included)
 

but in 06+ they changed the format just to show a low pressure warning :( -- the crappy thing about this is that the pressure change has to be 10-15 psi before MMI tells you anything.

there is an option to change this via VAGCOM -- you'd have to do a search to figure out what the codes are. Not sure if you can change the mmi setting via VAGCOM to display the individual tire pressure like it was in the early 05 models

Real time makes real sense. My '08 4.2 got the dumbed down TPMS.

Jazznuts - I have an 05 A6 4.2 (mfd March 2005) and I think I have the original MMI SW version (10.7.0) that came with the car - how do I see the tire pressure for all 4/5 wheels? Do I need a certain version of MMI?

Under Car -> Tire pressure monitoring, there's only two options: Store current tire pressures and Initialize wheels.

I was told by my dealer that our TPMS is not capable of displaying actual pressures .They told me it's due to the fact that our cars have only one antenna (roof mounted) for receiving the signal from all four wheel sensors. The A8 had one antenna for each wheel and different wheel sensors too.