Dash cam operational question

[Dana1]

I’ve successfully installed a formatted USB drive.

The dash cam seems to have three icons: camera with red dot, camera with green check, and a “download” symbol.

What do each signify? I’m assuming the red dot means it’s recording since it seems to like that icon.

 

[jdcollins5]

The red dot means it is recording and storing in computer memory. If you tap the dashcam icon the download symbol will appear. Once the download is successfully completed the green check appears. Then the red dot reappears indicating the recording has resumed.

The recording continues to store for one hour and then begins to write over. Each time you tap the icon it downloads the previous 10 minutes of recordings in 10 - 1 minute files. Another tap gives you the next previous 10 minutes ...... etc.

 

[SVMike]

If you tap and hold for a few seconds then the red dot turns grey and recording is stopped.
Tap and hold again to start recording again.

 

[outie]

Also when you have the TeslaCam run long enough, could be hours or days or weeks, you will start seeing a grey X on the dashcam icon as well, indicating the drive is corrupted and can’t be recorded until you yank out the USB to fix the drive and/or reformat it again.

 

[Darmie]

Also when you have the TeslaCam run long enough, could be hours or days or weeks, you will start seeing a grey X on the dashcam icon as well, indicating the drive is corrupted and can’t be recorded until you yank out the USB to fix the drive and/or reformat it again.

So, the easiest fix would be for the system stop recording when the car is in park and system still on?

 

[outie]

So, the easiest fix would be for the system stop recording when the car is in park and system still on?

I think that’s what some people do - stop recording by pressing and holding before getting out of the car and resume when get in car. Or some people put a few usb as spares.

To me that’s just too much hassle. Just wait til they fix this issue.

 

[EVnut]

Has anybody ever confirmed that it only ever records one hour of video total, and then overwrites it, regardless of memory capacity? One wonders why we have the recommendation of using the biggest memory stick possible. Mine has never worked long enough to figure out if one hour is the actual limit to recording.

 

[jdcollins5]

From what I understand from the Tesla documents is that the dashcam records one hour on internal memory, not on the memory stick. It only writes to the memory stick when you tap the dashcam icon, and then only ten minutes each time you tap.

 

[Need]

Has anybody ever confirmed that it only ever records one hour of video total, and then overwrites it, regardless of memory capacity? One wonders why we have the recommendation of using the biggest memory stick possible. Mine has never worked long enough to figure out if one hour is the actual limit to recording.

Yes it is one hour, 60 1-minute files. My drive home from work is always over a hour minimum.

 

[swaltner]

Having a 256 GB drive is currently “pointless”. The 1 hour loop (60 file of 1 minute in length occupying about 30 MB each) takes 1.8 GB. Each time you press the save button, the 10 latest “recent*” files, the ones consisting the 1 hour loop are renamed from recent... to saved... and the recording continues onto new recent... files. This behavior is documented in the release notes.

This means the dashcam uses 1.8 GB plus 300 MB per save session. A 16 GB drive would let you save the 1 hour loop and 45 different clips at 10 minutes each. Anything larger than that seems like overkill. If I have something interesting happen and save a clip, I usually “immediately” download it to my computer to review and possibly share.

This calculation may/will change in the future as Tesla changes the behavior of the dashcam feature. They might activate more cameras (rear/side); they might change the video compression settings; they might increase the loop size from 1 hour to 24 hours or an indefinite size (only remove old stuff when the drive is full); something else. Any of those could change the storage requirements, but until that happens and until a software update addresses the frequent drive corruption issues, use whatever drive you have laying around.

 

[EVnut]

From what I understand from the Tesla documents is that the dashcam records one hour on internal memory, not on the memory stick. It only writes to the memory stick when you tap the dashcam icon, and then only ten minutes each time you tap.

Huh. I'd never considered that take on the docs. And my experience doesn't bear that out. If I never tap the icon, the thing is immediately writing files to my memory stick. What tapping the icon does is convert 10 of the files to "saved" files, by renaming them.

 

[EVnut]

Having a 256 GB drive is currently “pointless”.

Whew. I dodged that one. I'm only half pointless at 128G. . At some point the documentation said to use a memory stick with a lot of storage. And since they're so dang cheap now, I went all out.

The 1 hour loop (60 file of 1 minute in length occupying about 30 MB each) takes 1.8 GB. Each time you press the save button, the 10 latest “recent*” files, the ones consisting the 1 hour loop are renamed from recent... to saved... and the recording continues onto new recent... files. This behavior is documented in the release notes.

I wasn't aware that the release notes were this explicit and informative. This is great information.... to know how it is *supposed* to work. Of course the release notes also seem to imply that this function will actually *work* without continual and somewhat random file corruption. :sigh: Now that I know what to expect, I'll pay more attention to what is really happening. I also plan to head out to the car to read the release notes....again. Remind me why I can't read these on the app??

they might increase the loop size from 1 hour to 24 hours or an indefinite size (only remove old stuff when the drive is full); .

Right. If it is eventually enabled to record while parked, we'll definitely want more than 1 hour! Seem silly to randomly start overwriting at one hour, but I'm sure we'll get this up to GoPro standards at some point. It's "just" software now.

Thanks again for your helpful post.

 

[jdcollins5]

Huh. I'd never considered that take on the docs. And my experience doesn't bear that out. If I never tap the icon, the thing is immediately writing files to my memory stick. What tapping the icon does is convert 10 of the files to "saved" files, by renaming them.

That is not the way mine seems to works. If I do not tap the icon to download there is nothing downloaded on my memory stick. If I tap the memory stick then I have ten saved files.

Are you saying that the dashcam is always writing to the memory stick, only saves 10 when you tap the icon, and then erases the other 50 minutes?

 

[EVnut]

That is not the way mine seems to works. If I do not tap the icon to download there is nothing downloaded on my memory stick. If I tap the memory stick then I have ten saved files.

Are you saying that the dashcam is always writing to the memory stick, only saves 10 when you tap the icon, and then erases the other 50 minutes?

Ok, then that is really odd to have them working so differently. Yes, my TeslaCam is always writing 1-minute files to my memory stick (between corruptions). Then it also writes corrupted files. And if I tap the icon, it saves off ten "saved" files (by renaming ten of the existing 60 that are always being consecutively over-written).

So for sure mine writes to the memory stick even without tapping the icon. BUT because mine fails so often, it's tough to figure out exactly how everything is supposed to operate. The release notes (unless there is a more complete version some where that's better than what's in the car) really aren't all that informative of the intended process.

 

[Need]

That is not the way mine seems to works. If I do not tap the icon to download there is nothing downloaded on my memory stick. If I tap the memory stick then I have ten saved files.

Are you saying that the dashcam is always writing to the memory stick, only saves 10 when you tap the icon, and then erases the other 50 minutes?

Yup. There should be 60 files of "recent....". Now if you park your car and did not take the stick out of the car, after 1 hour, all those files will be wiped. Even if the car stops recording, the files will be wiped after 1 hour.

 

[EVnut]

Yup. There should be 60 files of "recent....". Now if you park your car and did not take the stick out of the car, after 1 hour, all those files will be wiped. Even if the car stops recording, the files will be wiped after 1 hour.

Gah! What? First I've heard of THAT little "feature." And it answers some of my questions about the files I was seeing. But it doesn't answer why I have 30+ "recent" files from three days ago on the stick that I took out last night. Jeez. Maybe the corruption process fails to erase? Why would the system ever erase if there wasn't something to write over the files?? Really makes no sense.

 

[jdcollins5]

Yup. There should be 60 files of "recent....". Now if you park your car and did not take the stick out of the car, after 1 hour, all those files will be wiped. Even if the car stops recording, the files will be wiped after 1 hour.

Well I typically do not remove my stick except when I have downloaded and want to view my files. Maybe that is why I see only 10 saved files.

 

[Need]

Gah! What? First I've heard of THAT little "feature." And it answers some of my questions about the files I was seeing. But it doesn't answer why I have 30+ "recent" files from three days ago on the stick that I took out last night. Jeez. Maybe the corruption process fails to erase? Why would the system ever erase if there wasn't something to write over the files?? Really makes no sense.

I am just stating that from experience. I remember one time I took the stick out about 30 min to 40 min after the car was parked and I was left with 20 or so files.. pretty much the last 20 or so minutes of the drive home, including 1 min of recording of the boxes in my garage where it was parked.

And another time, I took it out in the morning, there was no recent files on it. Just the saved files. The car was parked overnight.

I don't think the system was erasing the files when the car was sleeping. I think most likely is when I go back to the car to wake it.. the dashcam started up again.. and saw that the recent files were not "recent" so it deleted the "outdated" files before I could unplug it.

 

[EVnut]

I am just stating that from experience. I remember one time I took the stick out about 30 min to 40 min after the car was parked and I was left with 20 or so files.. pretty much the last 20 or so minutes of the drive home, including 1 min of recording of the boxes in my garage where it was parked.

And another time, I took it out in the morning, there was no recent files on it. Just the saved files. The car was parked overnight.

I don't think the system was erasing the files when the car was sleeping. I think most likely is when I go back to the car to wake it.. the dashcam started up again.. and saw that the recent files were not "recent" so it deleted the "outdated" files before I could unplug it.

Crazy. Well, thanks for the info. At least I (sort of) know what to watch out for now. One day we'll all look back on this and laugh about Tesla's brilliance. I hope.

 

[SOULPEDL]

To recap... The easy way to use this is just keep on record and if you want to actually save anything then use the download feature, one press per 10 files/minutes. Otherwise it continually overwrites and just ignore it until I get the X, then reformat the corrupt drive.

Is that about it? And where's the app to automatically stitch 60 back together? Nice desktop widget perhaps?

Thanks, for the info above... amazing it took a gazillion posts in total to figure this all out.

Tesla, stuff like this actually makes you look stupid IMO, incapable of FSD.