All FSD/HW3 + MCU1 cars record broken dashcam video?

[Art VandeIay]

Was dashcsm available on any mcu1 cars at the time they were sold?

Yes, Model S and Model X's built from late August 2017 to mid April 2018, had MCU1 and AP2.5 hardware, which enabled Dashcam and Sentry that actually recorded to a USB drive (except for the backup camera feed), and it actually worked very smoothly back then.

Later, increasingly, let's say "feature rich" firmware updates and especially the new AP3/FSD computer, managed to bog down the tired and aging MCU1 to an unusable state.

 

[hybridbear]

Ok. I have to ask. Was dashcsm available on any mcu1 cars at the time they were sold? I don’t recall the timeline.

Yes, but it was different from the current iteration as it didn't include the backup camera. And for cars sold before AP2.5 was introduced it only became available upon installation of the HW3 computer.

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Yes, but it was different from the current iteration as it didn't include the backup camera. And for cars sold before AP2.5 was introduced it only became available upon installation of the HW3 computer.

My car had HW2.5 with the dashcam and the sentry mode perfectly working. After FSD computer (HW3) was installed, dashcam recordings became unusable.

Backup (rear) camera was there also from the start. "Side cameras" are not visible on MCU1 regardless of the FSD computer generation.

 

[viper2ko]

Ok. I have to ask. Was dashcsm available on any mcu1 cars at the time they were sold? I don’t recall the timeline.

No. Dashcam came later through software. Was never promised

 

[Tesomega]

Ok. I have to ask. Was dashcsm available on any mcu1 cars at the time they were sold? I don’t recall the timeline.

They were not as of 09/2017. As all of Elon feature promises, it was discussed as a OTA feature update that can be developed, this is the time when there were more tesla thefts and quarter panel breaks ins.

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Quick update

Tesla has not answered to any of my contact attempts, including:

• Several emails to service center contact email
• Several emails to specific service rep who was supposed to handle the case
• Two service requests on Tesla app

Any ideas/experiences from trying to get in contact with Tesla for them issuing a refund they have already promised? I would like to avoid bothering people there who are not in position to make decisions to resolve the case, but do not have direct contact for the manager who committed to refund (just his first name and video of him promising a refund).

(Looks like getting a refund from Tesla seems to be mess even in a simpler case)

 

[brkaus]

Sound like what Tesla needs to learn from this is don’t go add features that were not on the car at the time of sale.

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Sound like what Tesla needs to learn from this is don’t go add features that were not on the car at the time of sale.

I would think that would be the wrong lesson. People really appreciate added features - those are one of the reasons they value Tesla cars over the competition.

Right lessons could be:

1. Define what is supported HW for each feature communicate that clearly
2. Test before you ship to ensure you do not break what you already released previously
3. When you fail, own it and make it good for the affected

With those they would maintain a very supportive base of customers.

 

[Pink Duck]

DashCam as a software feature eventually made its way with version 9 release in October 2018, well after the last MCU1 built S/X was delivered.

Tesla have a telephone support number in the UK (it’s 01628 450660) open during usual office hours with virtual allocation to one of their customer advisors. At least if patient you'll get through to someone human, whether they can help is another thing. Over the years I get the sense their staff are trained not to respond if there's nothing that can be actioned.

The US site seems to suggest there are only service centres for phone contact.

 

[t3sl4drvr]

DashCam as a software feature eventually made its way with version 9 release in October 2018, well after the last MCU1 built S/X was delivered.

Tesla have a telephone support number in the UK (it’s 01628 450660) open during usual office hours with virtual allocation to one of their customer advisors. At least if patient you'll get through to someone human, whether they can help is another thing. Over the years I get the sense their staff are trained not to respond if there's nothing that can be actioned.

The US site seems to suggest there are only service centres for phone contact.

Got through to a human with Tesla support chat. She informed that their policy is to never share a name or contact info of any Tesla employee. Nevertheless, she did track down the service center manager and wrote him an email asking to him to get back to me asap.

While chat was not able to help in this case due to Tesla policy preventing them from doing so, they were available and tried their best. You can connect them at tesla.com/contactus by choosing "Vehicle service appointment" "Question about upcoming service" and answering yes to "Do you need more help?" (Probably some other topics would lead to chat as well, not all do)

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Tested just released 2021.24.28 where release notes mention “dashcam improvements”. Video is still choppy for me (losing parts of the mpeg stream). The quick drive around the block was too little to test it, but first impression is that there might be improvement.

Also, seems that left repeater does not record at all. It was recording fine before Tesla team started “remote diagnosing” the car. Maybe they have mistakenly left it disabled.

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Tesla continues to ghost me on the promised FSD refund.

I have initiated legal action due to that being the only option left. I will not discuss the details of the legal process here while it is ongoing. If I do not end up settling with Tesla so that a non-disclosure agreement blocks it, I’ll share more about that after there is some kind of closure.

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Here is MCU1 + FSD (HW3.0) Model S with the latest available (today released) 2021.24.28. Video stream is breaking from time to time with results looking like this. If left repeater would not be working as well (presumably disabled by Tesla while doing diagnostics), 50% more bandwidth would be needed and the recordings might be even worse.

With this, my assessment is that the problem has not been fixed with 2021.24.28.

 

[dbldwn02]

Yea, they should have never put dashcam on MCU1. It was nearly EOL when they pushed that update. Yup, many would have complained that they weren't getting the latest, but we can chalk those up to pure entitlement.

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Yea, they should have never put dashcam on MCU1. It was nearly EOL when they pushed that update. Yup, many would have complained that they weren't getting the latest, but we can chalk those up to pure entitlement.

Dashcam worked just fine with MCU1 + HW2.5. Keeping a feature working with MCU1 + HW3.0 is not hard if one cares to test.

My guess for what is happening here is that Tesla have internally declared MCU1 as not supported and does not care at all whether cars with that works or not. To avoid breaking the cars they have decided not to touch them. While this might be ok in most cases, it will break down in two particular cases: 1) making changes to HW (installing FSD) leading to configuration Tesla seemed to have not even tested if it works, 2) authorities forcing to fix issues (like crashing to police cars on autopilot).

What Tesla should have done is to stop selling FSD without including MCU2 in the package after they knew that they would not support MCU1. They could have just increased the price by $2000 and everything would be good for those deals.

Obviously they did not know at the time they started selling FSD that they are not able to deliver it on the HW they had in cars. Lesson there is not to sell something that you do not have.

 

[TunaRollz]

Thanks T3sl4. Sad there isn’t any improvement from the update, but I’m way more shocked there was even a new update for us MCU1 guys…I thought we were left for dead for good. ;(

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Quick FFMPEG analysis on the MPEG stream from MCU1 is filled with errors like:

*** dropping frame 145 from stream 0 at ts 142
[h264 @ 0x150833a00] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
[libx264 @ 0x150829000] frame=  86 QP=28.57 NAL=0 Slice:B Poc:114 I:627  P:2339 SKIP:1834 size=32264 bytes
[h264 @ 0x150834000] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
[libx264 @ 0x150829000] frame=  87 QP=28.93 NAL=0 Slice:B Poc:118 I:468  P:2314 SKIP:2018 size=23475 bytes
[h264 @ 0x150834600] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
[libx264 @ 0x150829000] frame=  88 QP=22.09 NAL=2 Slice:P Poc:128 I:4049 P:751  SKIP:0    size=68575 bytes
[h264 @ 0x150823000] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
*** dropping frame 148 from stream 0 at ts 146
[h264 @ 0x150824e00] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
[libx264 @ 0x150829000] frame=  89 QP=27.20 NAL=2 Slice:B Poc:124 I:1178 P:2048 SKIP:1574 size=38583 bytes
[h264 @ 0x150825400] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
[libx264 @ 0x150829000] frame=  90 QP=29.32 NAL=0 Slice:B Poc:122 I:671  P:1964 SKIP:2165 size=26176 bytes
[h264 @ 0x150831c00] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
[libx264 @ 0x150829000] frame=  91 QP=28.54 NAL=0 Slice:B Poc:126 I:530  P:2315 SKIP:1955 size=23693 bytes
[h264 @ 0x150832200] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
[libx264 @ 0x150829000] frame=  92 QP=20.78 NAL=2 Slice:P Poc:136 I:1868 P:1887 SKIP:1045 size=68642 bytes
[h264 @ 0x150832800] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
[libx264 @ 0x150829000] frame=  93 QP=24.83 NAL=2 Slice:B Poc:132 I:1    P:607  SKIP:4192 size=449 bytes
Clipping frame in rate conversion by 0.538933
[h264 @ 0x150832e00] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
[libx264 @ 0x150829000] frame=  94 QP=29.03 NAL=0 Slice:B Poc:130 I:653  P:2668 SKIP:1479 size=27125 bytes
[h264 @ 0x150833400] nal_unit_type: 1(Coded slice of a non-IDR picture), nal_ref_idc: 1
[libx264 @ 0x150829000] frame=  95 QP=20.01 NAL=0 Slice:B Poc:134 I:0    P:103  SKIP:4697 size=141 bytes
*** 2 dup!

To me this looks like the stream produced by dashcam is broken.

 

[Tesomega]

I would have appreciated a navigations maps update. Still 2020.

 

[Pink Duck]

From @greentheonly it seems likely that the newer firmware aimed at MCU1 Tegra is to separate out the maps into a version compatible with the older infotainment capability, or to shelve them off at that point altogether. For my S on MCU1 with AP3+FSD I didn't get the previous >2020 firmware for MCU1 and I doubt I'll see this one either.

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Lets keep everyone entertained here...

Here is a transcript of my conversation with service center manager named Paul at Sunnyvale service center after they spent five days diagnosing the dashcam issue for 5 days there:

[Customer] I brought it in for fixing the dashcam and what I heard from your rep is that it is something that you cannot fix yet.
[Paul] Yes, because engineering team is diagnosing that. That is the part I know about that one. So the engineering team. Jared is probably one of the most knowledgeable technicians. Did he speak with you already?
[Customer] Yes, he spoke. So... One of the technicians spoke.
[Paul] Yes, that was Jared. So, he escalated that to the engineering team. The engineering team is now doing their research to see what kind of fixes there are. When the engineering team gets back to us, we get back to the customer.
[Customer] Yeah, he already confirmed on Monday [when I brought the car for service], that it can be fixed by installing MCU2.
[Paul] So, the MCU2 is a possibility. They do not guarantee that it will fix it. It is a possibility. I am not sure what is the cost of MCU2, but not a guarantee that's gonna fix the dashcam.
[Customer] I checked with a couple of customers who had exact same issue, who paid for MCU2 and they...
[Paul] They paid for MCU2 and it fixed it?
[Customer] Yeah.
[Paul] Ok. I do not feel comfortable selling you MCU2 if I do not 100% know that that's gonna fix it. So would probably talk to the engineering team. Now if the customer wants to still upgrade to MCU2...
[Customer] No, I do not want to pay for it. The key thing is that I already paid for Full Self-Drive.
[Paul] Yes. The FSD.
[Customer] And that is actually the reason for this problem. So the FSD broke the...
[Paul] So when you get the FSD, it does work on the MCU1. But if you want to upgrade [to MCU2], there is a charge.
[Customer] I mean.. It does not work with MCU1 today.
[Paul] Ok. Right. And that will be a future thing. And this is why people with FSD, is a beta program.
[Customer] Exactly. I understand.
[Paul] It will give the opportunity. The possibility to get it later on.
[Customer] But right now the situation is that I have two problems with the car: The FSD has not been delivered yet. And dashcam is broken. And both of these could be fixed by basicly paying for MCU2.
[Paul] Yes. And MCU2 is an upgrade.
[Customer] Yeah, I understand.
[Paul] So, I do not know what the cost is.
[Customer] I know. It is $1500.
[Paul] Is it?
[Customer] Yes. Plus $500 for the FM tuner. So...
[Paul] $2000 for the MCU2. Ok.
[Customer] What I would suggest it that you would pay for it, because you broke the car. And it is under warranty.
[Paul] We broke the car?
[Customer] Yes, basically by installing the FSD. So that broke the dashcam.
[Paul] Did we sell you the FSD, or did you decide to purchase the FSD? Two different things. If the customer decides that they want to purchase the FSD, that is 100% on the customer.
[Customer] You do understand that the deal was not that it would break features from the car.
[Paul] It did not break anything. So basically, if you do want dashcam to work, we can take off the FSD. But you want the FSD. And to get the FSD, you need to upgrade to MCU2.
[Customer] If that is the case, then I would like to return the FSD and have full refund for it.
[Paul] Ok. Then I go ahead and.. Did you buy buy this online?
[Customer] Yes. I did buy it online. It cost... I had the - what it is called, the - Enhanced Autopilot before that. And then I paid $5000 for the FSD.
[Paul] FSD. So yes. You purchased it online, I believe there is way for you to do the return online.
[Customer] There is not.
[Paul] Then we would need to find out how to do that return. Yeah.
[Customer] If that is possible, then I would like to do that.
[Paul] Yeah. We'll return the FSD. Because, we are not gonna give free MCU2s for every customer who buys an FSD because it does not come with it. Two separate things. If you want the FSD, then the MCU2 needs to be upgraded. If it does not get upgraded, then you would wait until there is a fix by engineering team. Which I am not sure what that is at the moment.
[Customer] Yeah, I guess that the challenge is that nobody knows when that fix might appear.
[Paul] Well, exactly. That is why I am telling you that I am not sure if that MCU2 is gonna work. But if the customer says thay hey it is gonna work. I wanna buy it. That is up to the customer.
[Customer] Then we have a resolution: I just want to return the [FSD]...
[Paul turns to speak with service rep] This one, I just need to write notes on it and figure out how to do the refund for the FSD.
[Service rep] Gotcha. I'll ...
[Paul] I think once it returns, I do not know if customer has another opportunity to that in the future. I do not know...
[Customer] That is a separate issue that..
[Paul] Yeah.
[Service rep] Ok. Gotha.
[Paul] All right.
[Service rep] Perfect.
[Paul] Sounds good.
[Customer] All right.
[Paul leaves to let service rep handle the practicalities] Where is Mario...

After the conversation, customer service rep took the details he needed for return, including FSD purchase receipt. Paul joined in for a bit to inform that he will get back to customer probably next week on details for the refund.