Anyone still rocking a Pi Zero W smart drive for TeslaCam on Sentry Mode?

[MediumFidelity]

If you're not concerned about random lithium pack in your car, there's solutions to the power interruption such as

Raspberry Pi UPS HAT

Old thread, but another option for a UPS for the a Raspberry Pi (even the more power hungry Pi 4) is this board: LiFePO4wered/Pi+

It uses a LiFePO4 cell, so should handle more charge cycles and is less likely to "thermal runaway" on you.

 

[FatherTo1]

Just tried TeslaUSB on a spare Pi Zero W for our Model Y. Works pretty well but it has been transferring files for the past 45 minutes and is still not done. About 40 minutes of total driving and transfer rate is an abysmal 1 MB/s. I understand the Pi 4 suppprts 5ghz WiFi but I don’t think I want to bother with wireless transfer anymore.

The idea sounded great and I appreciate all the work cimryan, marcone, and others contributed to the project, but it is simply faster for me to pull the drive out and access it on my phone or computer.

It was a fun experiment though. I knew exactly which minute of video I was interested in but had to wait 30 minutes for the particular file to transfer over.

A few things I didn’t expect when using TeslaUSB are:

1. It takes approximately 60-90 seconds for the Pi to power up and start normal recording. My fear is I will start driving somewhere and get hit in that initial boot up period and not capture the accident. I know that’s gonna be rare but not completely implausible, especially if you’re just backing out of a parking spot and someone hits you.

2. The Pi has now been transferring close to an hour. I expected the Model Y to go into deep sleep after 15 minutes and kill the Pi. On the one hand, it’s good the Pi doesn’t get interrupted but it’s also preventing the car from sleeping. Definitely quicker for me to pull a drive out if I really need to access something important and maybe plug in a backup drive to keep Sentry Mode active if I was at a hotel or parked along the street.

3. TeslaUSB also deletes the Sentry Mode folders after transfer is complete. This makes sense. However, I fear something might get corrupted during file transfer and then I can’t go back and check the original if the folder is automatically deleted. I am comfortable enough to dig into the code and modify or comment out the “clean” routines, but it’s just something for others to be aware of.

Again, I applaud the work that went into the TeslaUSB project and am glad it has proven its value to many. It was fun to try out and learn but I’m going back to my previous SSD or high endurance memory cards.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

Even without 5GHz, the 4B is probably much faster at everything than the Zero. If you want something small, maybe there's an zero-equivalent carrier board for the Compute Module 4.

 

[maximus96]

I also started with a Zero W but the 2.4ghz is too slow. I bought a 4 a few days later. The same config can be used on the 4 and it works so much faster. Even the boot up is faster

 

[ChrisPDX]

The idea sounded great and I appreciate all the work cimryan, marcone, and others contributed to the project, but it is simply faster for me to pull the drive out and access it on my phone or computer.

The point of the Pi setup is that you just don't have to worry about it. I've been using this for over two years now and only once when I needed to urgently see the video on my PC did I remove it to manually transfer. The rest of the time the videos get archived to my NAS and left alone. Speed of that transfer isn't important as long as it gets done and I don't have to sit around waiting for it.

Normally I view alerts in the car and delete as needed. However if I'm short on time and can't review them or want to save them, I leave them alone and let the Pi transfer them to my NAS later. I have a scripted program that runs every night that then processes the videos into a single MPEG file and speeds up the playback. So if I then review on my PC later, I can more quickly check them. Another script then automatically deletes them after a few months. The whole process is automatic from recording, to transferring, to processing and then purging.

I haven't fully tested it, but I don't think I've ever had the Pi corrupt or loose a video. It seems to wait to delete each of the recordings until all have been successfully transferred. The Tesla itself corrupting recordings is much more common of an issue for me then anything else.

 

[maximus96]

From a few versions back, TeslaUSB no longer delete videos after transferring.

 

[FatherTo1]

From a few versions back, TeslaUSB no longer delete videos after transferring.

Oh, that would explain why I still had files left on the Pi TeslaCam partition. I thought there was a glitch when power got cut. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[FatherTo1]

The point of the Pi setup is that you just don't have to worry about it. I've been using this for over two years now and only once when I needed to urgently see the video on my PC did I remove it to manually transfer. The rest of the time the videos get archived to my NAS and left alone. Speed of that transfer isn't important as long as it gets done and I don't have to sit around waiting for it.

Normally I view alerts in the car and delete as needed. However if I'm short on time and can't review them or want to save them, I leave them alone and let the Pi transfer them to my NAS later. I have a scripted program that runs every night that then processes the videos into a single MPEG file and speeds up the playback. So if I then review on my PC later, I can more quickly check them. Another script then automatically deletes them after a few months. The whole process is automatic from recording, to transferring, to processing and then purging.

I haven't fully tested it, but I don't think I've ever had the Pi corrupt or loose a video. It seems to wait to delete each of the recordings until all have been successfully transferred. The Tesla itself corrupting recordings is much more common of an issue for me then anything else.

See, that’s the thing, I was sitting around waiting for it, which defeats the purpose. I wanted to show my wife something I noticed on the road and it took half an hour of transferring before the particular desired file popped up on my NAS.

Regarding your last comment about the Tesla corrupting recordings, isn’t that still possible since the Pi isn’t doing the recording but rather presenting a microSD partition to the MCU? It would be dependent on the quality of the microSD, same as plugging directly to the USB port.

I am glad the project meets your needs.

 

[maximus96]

Anyone have issues with the car not seeing the USB after a deep sleep. I never had this problem before but three times now with 2021.12 software, the car doesn't see the drive when I leave in the morning. Never happened before for the past year that I've had the car and TeslaUSB. Thanks

 

[gmtom1]

Anyone have issues with the car not seeing the USB after a deep sleep. I never had this problem before but three times now with 2021.12 software, the car doesn't see the drive when I leave in the morning. Never happened before for the past year that I've had the car and TeslaUSB. Thanks

It's a known issue. Something Tesla changed recently is causing a problem with TeslaUSB. Two-button reset of the screen works to temporarily resolve the issue, but it'll return again in a random period of time.

 

[Slrtbrtfst]

Oh, that would explain why I still had files left on the Pi TeslaCam partition. I thought there was a glitch when power got cut. Thanks for clearing that up.

So what's the best way to delete the old files off the Pi? Is there a setting to delete old files?

 

[maximus96]

So what's the best way to delete the old files off the Pi? Is there a setting to delete old files?

you can always just format the Pi USB, or let the car fill it up and overwrite as needed. TeslaUSB knows not to copy old files.

 

[Slrtbrtfst]

you can always just format the Pi USB, or let the car fill it up and overwrite as needed. TeslaUSB knows not to copy old files.

Wouldn't that delete all the things (as in the OS)? Or is there something I'm missing.

 

[RichieB]

Why do you want to delete old files? TeslaUSB does that automatically as space gets tight.

 

[Slrtbrtfst]

Why do you want to delete old files? TeslaUSB does that automatically as space gets tight.

Oh, I didn't realize that. If it does that, then all is good. Thanks! The other thing I was trying to figure out is if I can reconfigure settings without having to reload a new config file. Is there a file where I can make changes and reboot?

 

[RichieB]

Sure, you can edit the settings using ssh. Don’t forget the remount-rw first so you can save them.

 

[Slrtbrtfst]

Sure, you can edit the settings using ssh. Don’t forget the remount-rw first so you can save them.

Cool! But I'm really green when it comes to this sort of thing. I can SSH in, no problem, and use nano to edit files, but what file do I edit (where is it located and what's its name) and what is the syntax for that remount-rw command (that's new to me)? And thanks for your technical support!

 

[RichieB]

The commands to get into edit mode are:

sudo -i
/root/bin/remountfs_rw

All the live config files are in the /mutable folder. However, it is recommended to edit /root/teslausb_setup_variables.conf and then run

/root/bin/setup-teslausb

This will update the config files with the new values from the setup config file.

 

[khavusr]

Same issue with marcone / teslausb which works fine and does the magic when connected to a Windows system; but once out in the car doesn't seem to boot up proper and the the USB partition isn't mounted. So no go currently as well. I'm on 2021.12.25.7.

 

[Slrtbrtfst]

The commands to get into edit mode are:

sudo -i
/root/bin/remountfs_rw

All the live config files are in the /mutable folder. However, it is recommended to edit /root/teslausb_setup_variables.conf and then run

/root/bin/setup-teslausb

This will update the config files with the new values from the setup config file.

Awesome. Thanks!