TLDR: New USB3 Hub in glovebox apparently caused some type of interference with 2023 M3P TPMS (which uses BLE "Bluetooth Low Energy" to connect to the car) causing it to fail when a particular USB3 hub is used.
I ran into an interesting issue over the last few days with my 2023 Model 3 Performance. I previously had been using a 1 TB Samsung portable SSD in the glovebox with 2 exfat partitions, one for TeslaCAM files and the other for Music mp3's, .flac and .wav files. It seemed to work without any issues.
I decided that the 1 TB portable Samsung SSD was a bit of overkill so I decided to replace it with a 4 port USB hub and a couple of high speed thumb drives, one containing the TeslaCam files and another containing music and a third possibly for Lightshow files.
So I obtained a brand new Anker 4 port USB3 hub from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L32B9C2?th=1) and used a couple of thumb drives I already had (Sandisk UltraFit High Speed), a 512GB for TeslaCam files and a 256GB for Music. I got the drives formatted with exfat and the files situated on their respective drives and removed the Samsung SSD from the glovebox and plugged my new USB 3 hub with the two thumb drives attached. Everything worked as expected, TeslaCAM files being recorded on the 512 GB drive and my music on the 256GB Drive. Yay!
However, within a day or so I experienced a "Tire Pressure Monitoring System Fault. Pressure Sensor fault may clear next drive". But the message would not clear. I tried service mode to clear the TPMS pairings (the TPMS would not re-pair properly after that process) and then various reboots of the Tesla console, several power offs from the console, and even a complete hard power off (disconnect 16v Li-Ion battery along with HV disconnect under rear seat) of the car.
I felt a visit to the Tesla SC might be in order, unfortunately the nearest SC is over an hour away.
Nothing I could think of would fix the TPMS issue. Before I scheduled a service visit, I thought back to any changes that I'd recently made to the environment and decided to remove my new USB3 Hub and drives and go back to the Samsung portable SSD that I had previously been using. Not the most obvious choice, but the force of cause and effect was strong here.
That immediately fixed the TPMS issue. The TPMS sensors immediately paired back to the car within about 1000ft of driving.
Being a long time professional techie I was not completely surprised by this outcome on one hand but on the other hand my thought was WTF????
I'm leaving this here with the hope that it might help someone who might run into a similar problem. No need to tear out hair or schedule TESLA SC visits if something as simple as a USB3 hub can cause these kinds of issues.
Apparently BLE based TPMS in a "Software Defined Vehicle" is not without it's potential faults. BLE uses signals in the standard 2.4-2.5 GHz Wi-Fi band for communication. One would not think that a USB3 hub would cause this type of interference, but in my case it most definitely does.
A bit of online searching shows that this is not an unknown issue. Using Google and searching for: USB hub causes interference with TPMS brings up several hits showing that USB3 hubs can interfere with 2.4-2.5 GHz wireless signals. Now that I've made it this far I have a faint memory of being exposed to the USB3 interference issue previously, but I didn't make the connection with BLE TPMS until now. I still think it's a WTF?? moment.
If this post can save you some time or aggravation, then it's worth it.
I ran into an interesting issue over the last few days with my 2023 Model 3 Performance. I previously had been using a 1 TB Samsung portable SSD in the glovebox with 2 exfat partitions, one for TeslaCAM files and the other for Music mp3's, .flac and .wav files. It seemed to work without any issues.
I decided that the 1 TB portable Samsung SSD was a bit of overkill so I decided to replace it with a 4 port USB hub and a couple of high speed thumb drives, one containing the TeslaCam files and another containing music and a third possibly for Lightshow files.
So I obtained a brand new Anker 4 port USB3 hub from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L32B9C2?th=1) and used a couple of thumb drives I already had (Sandisk UltraFit High Speed), a 512GB for TeslaCam files and a 256GB for Music. I got the drives formatted with exfat and the files situated on their respective drives and removed the Samsung SSD from the glovebox and plugged my new USB 3 hub with the two thumb drives attached. Everything worked as expected, TeslaCAM files being recorded on the 512 GB drive and my music on the 256GB Drive. Yay!
However, within a day or so I experienced a "Tire Pressure Monitoring System Fault. Pressure Sensor fault may clear next drive". But the message would not clear. I tried service mode to clear the TPMS pairings (the TPMS would not re-pair properly after that process) and then various reboots of the Tesla console, several power offs from the console, and even a complete hard power off (disconnect 16v Li-Ion battery along with HV disconnect under rear seat) of the car.
I felt a visit to the Tesla SC might be in order, unfortunately the nearest SC is over an hour away.
Nothing I could think of would fix the TPMS issue. Before I scheduled a service visit, I thought back to any changes that I'd recently made to the environment and decided to remove my new USB3 Hub and drives and go back to the Samsung portable SSD that I had previously been using. Not the most obvious choice, but the force of cause and effect was strong here.
That immediately fixed the TPMS issue. The TPMS sensors immediately paired back to the car within about 1000ft of driving.
Being a long time professional techie I was not completely surprised by this outcome on one hand but on the other hand my thought was WTF????
I'm leaving this here with the hope that it might help someone who might run into a similar problem. No need to tear out hair or schedule TESLA SC visits if something as simple as a USB3 hub can cause these kinds of issues.
Apparently BLE based TPMS in a "Software Defined Vehicle" is not without it's potential faults. BLE uses signals in the standard 2.4-2.5 GHz Wi-Fi band for communication. One would not think that a USB3 hub would cause this type of interference, but in my case it most definitely does.
A bit of online searching shows that this is not an unknown issue. Using Google and searching for: USB hub causes interference with TPMS brings up several hits showing that USB3 hubs can interfere with 2.4-2.5 GHz wireless signals. Now that I've made it this far I have a faint memory of being exposed to the USB3 interference issue previously, but I didn't make the connection with BLE TPMS until now. I still think it's a WTF?? moment.
If this post can save you some time or aggravation, then it's worth it.
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