POSSIBLE SOLUTION!
SHORT VERSION: Removing my TeslaCam USB thumb drive appears to have restored all systems to functionality. Cruise, Autopilot, lane line display, obstacle display, and Sentry Mode all now work as expected. I think it may be that either the TeslaCam process or corruption on the USB thumb drive assigned for TeslaCam is sabotaging the entire camera network (hence no TACC/EAP, lane detection, vehicle detection, or Sentry Mode detection).
CAVEAT: I neglected to test-drive the vehicle this morning BEFORE removing the TeslaCam drive, to confirm that the problem symptoms persisted. So it's
possible that the problem was resolved without any action on my part between the last time I drove the Model 3 yesterday and today's experiment. But I've operated the vehicle perhaps 5-6 park/drive cycles, and one overnight idle/sleep/charge cycle since the problem appeared on 5/4/2019 with no such "spontaneous" improvements. So I'm relatively confident that the action of removing the TeslaCam thumb drive was related to restoring functionality. Hopefully, others of you will be able to experiment and provide additional data to confirm or disprove the results.
LONGER VERSION: Inspired by the post by user "nizmo" on the "
Display no longer shows lane lines and surrounding cars" thread where they discovered empty video files (I'd already been suspicious that this whole problem was related to the video system), I unmounted (by holding the DashCam icon until its red "Recording" indicator extinguishes) and removed the thumb drive I'm using for TeslaCam.
I mounted the drive on a computer to inspect the files. As luck would have it, I happened to have manually saved a TeslaCam video set at just the right time (I don't think the action of saving caused the problem, because the affected files were written prior to invoking the "Save" action), and you can see in the image of the directory of files that the MPEG-4 files suddenly change size, from the typical 25-30MB to only 595 bytes - an empty file. The last moment recorded is unremarkable - the Model 3 is slowing (no Autopilot engaged) as we are reaching the end of a highway entrance ramp to join an interstate.
I then test-drove the Model 3
without any DashCam thumb drive installed. Immediately upon putting the car in drive, I saw it displaying the motorhome in our driveway as a jittering image of a city bus, and I was confident that I'd found a way to change the symptoms. In a short drive up the street, I saw speed limit indicators, lane lines and avatars of nearby vehicles. I engaged Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) and Enhanced Autopilot (EAP) normally (which I haven't been able to do since symptoms began two days ago). I just tested Sentry Mode, and it also now detects my presence on cameras.
After realizing that I should have test-driven immediately
before pulling the TeslaCam USB thumb drive, I experimentally re-inserted the same thumb drive
after the successful test-drive without formatting or otherwise changing its contents. When I restarted and drove the Model 3, all systems continued to function as normal. While this may seem to disprove that the USB thumb drive was related to the problem, I have (as a 38-year computer hobbyist and professional diagnostician) encountered many situations where a problem culprit was a computing "process" (a software routine being executed - Teslas might have hundreds or thousands running concurrently) which was started and stopped when a USB device was present. The fact that the DashCam icon appears automatically when a properly-configured USB drive is mounted is evidence of this kind of property. On many occasions, I've determined that a single USB device caused an entire desktop computer to become non-responsive - and removing the device physically restored access to the entire system of thousands of processes. So it may be that there was a bug in Tesla's DashCam code, or that there was a corrupted bit of the thumb drive (though Tesla's code shouldn't be at the mercy of the health of a user-installed accessory) which managed to sabotage the entire Autopilot camera network. We will probably never know the details. (Software "bugs" are an inevitability, and exist in every computing device you own. Our cars are computing devices, and are subject to these inevitabilities. Tesla is as aggressive as any code-writing entity - more than most - at maintaining and improving their software, so fixes will be forthcoming. But not all software changes will be positive. Welcome to the New World.)
I was able to view NEW automatically and manually saved video files from this test drive without reformatting the thumb drive, so that suggests that corruption of the thumb drive may not be a factor. I intend to reinstall the very same thumb drive and continue to operate it to see if the symptoms reappear (I'm more curious than cautious).
From those of you who are experiencing these symptoms, it is now
very important to know:
- If unmounting your DashCam USB thumb drive resolves "Cruise not available" for you
- What version of software your Tesla is running
- Whether your problems appeared immediately after a software update
- Mine did, but that may be coincidence, or semi-concidence, since my video files were actually OK for the first few minutes of driving after the update to 2019.12.1.2
- If any of you experienced this problem intermittently (sometimes it didn't, but then sometimes it worked)
- If any of you have experienced the "Cruise not available" who do NOT have a USB thumb drive installed for recording DashCam footage
Hopefully, we'll be able to help other users with the results.
I'm excited and relieved to have at least found an apparent cause to what I suspect will be a one-time anomaly. I'll wait a few days before canceling the Tesla Service appointment I scheduled (11 days in the future in Burbank, CA).
Ellsworth Nov18 LR RWD