Dashcam Issue

[gymdent]

My dashcam was working fine, no issues until it stopped recording on March 24. Regardless, I had decided I'd get a larger capacity drive so, according to recommendations, I purchased a Samsung SSD T5 500 GB drive. Formatted it on my Mac, as I had done the previous one. It did not work either. Then, remembering that one of the recent software updates allows the car to format the drive I placed the drive in the car, formatted, and still not working.

The car labeled the drive TESLADRIVE. It contains two separate file folders. One labeled TeslaCam and the other labeled TeslatrackMode. Both folders are empty after a 10 minute drive.

Both the Dashcam and the Sentry Mode are enabled.

Suggestions?

 

[Vipercat]

Does any recordings appear when you honk or shorty press the recording button? Then at least you know the car is able to save the recordings.

 

[gymdent]

I haven’t tried honking. We did run an errand which was under 10 minutes there, shut the car, and the same back. Where is the record button?

I read on a Facebook forum that others were having similar issues which they attribute to software. Not sure if that is valid.

 

[Vipercat]

Where is the record button?

The record button is one of the options that is available when you press the dashcam-recorder icon on top of your screen. The second option that appears is the dashcam viewer function that was recently added.

 

[gymdent]

The record button is one of the options that is available when you press the dashcam-recorder icon on top of your screen. The second option that appears is the dashcam viewer function that was recently added.

Thanks!

 

[Wennfred]

Just got my Model 3 back from the Miramar San Diego service center where they took good care of me and fixed the issue with recording sentry mode and Dashcam, there seems to be a logic chip that froze or glitched and remained stuck, no reboot at home would help, they would have to do a total shutdown at the shop of all circuits and reset all computer back to factory. Level 2 engineer was involved since this wasn’t common. Once the restore was all completed the Dashcam started to record again. I dropped it off yesterday June 4th at noon and it was ready by 2:30pm today Jun 5th. Tonight I will test Sentry mode. A beautiful red Model S 75D was given to me as a loaner to take home over night. Enterprise Car rentals is right there. All was covered and even the loaner. This was my first Service call with Tesla and I can tell you it was the best experience ever.


Fred

 

[ViperDoc]

I am having a similar problem. My dashcam stopped recording. When I took the flashdrive to my computer, it no longer seems to work. So I bought a new drive that meets the specs. Model 3 says that it isn't recognized. So I reformatted on my mac as exFAT and put appropriate folder on the drive. No luck. Reformatted as MS-DOS (just like instructions said), no luck. It won't over the "reformat" option, and it won't read drive when I format. Very strange.

 

[Wennfred]

I am having a similar problem. My dashcam stopped recording. When I took the flashdrive to my computer, it no longer seems to work. So I bought a new drive that meets the specs. Model 3 says that it isn't recognized. So I reformatted on my mac as exFAT and put appropriate folder on the drive. No luck. Reformatted as MS-DOS (just like instructions said), no luck. It won't over the "reformat" option, and it won't read drive when I format. Very strange.

Reboot your car, you just had a new update. And use this format:

Don’t give it a volume name, leave that blank and use the fast format, this works as Tesla uses an older version of Fat32, exFat has never worked for me.

Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd

Fred

 

[ViperDoc]

Thanks. I will give that a shot. Have a great day.

 

[rdskill]

It worked great for a year.... then mine stopped working early on this year. Finally made an appointment but had to wait 3 weeks. Mobile service came out.... told me a bunch of wrong information. Still didn't work. Called in for another appointment. This time it was 4 weeks to the next opening.

Reformatted the usb drive (exact one specified in owners manual) the night before the appointment. It worked fine. They said there was no problem. drove to work. It worked fine. Drove from work to home. It didn't work. A couple weeks later I traded it in and it still wasn't working.

Moral of the story... Tesla continues pumping out cars and there service centers are overwhelmed. 3 to 4 weeks to have a usb hub checked out is pretty outrageous. Loved the car.

So now my 2020 Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk (much better at off roading) has a HD dashcam stuck to the windshield and it works like a charm. As do the automatic wipers. The lane keeping is very iffy (looks of road construction and redone lanes). I really miss that during rush hour. The adaptive cruise works pretty good and it doesn't pick the speed, I do. I am happy with it. Not so happy pumping gas again. That sucks.

 

[Wennfred]

Last year you can hit the cam icon and record your whole drive or any portion of your drive. It’s not like that today. Today while active the only way it will save the recording is to either honk to save or simply tap on the cam icon to save and that will save the last 10 minutes to view it later.

But mine got stuck, it wouldn’t even do that, the screen reset and the format of various flash cards wasn’t working. Went to the SC where they said they did the hard reset from the 12v contractor over by the penthouse. Took a day, when I got it back Sentry mode worked again and also the Dashcam but only as I described above.

Too bad it doesn’t record the whole session like before.

Fred

 

[Tony_YYZ]

Last year you can hit the cam icon and record your whole drive or any portion of your drive. It’s not like that today. Today while active the only way it will save the recording is to either honk to save or simply tap on the cam icon to save and that will save the last 10 minutes to view it later.

But mine got stuck, it wouldn’t even do that, the screen reset and the format of various flash cards wasn’t working. Went to the SC where they said they did the hard reset from the 12v contractor over by the penthouse. Took a day, when I got it back Sentry mode worked again and also the Dashcam but only as I described above.

Too bad it doesn’t record the whole session like before.

Fred

I've been wondering if something was broken with my dashcam. I can only see random clips in the dashcam viewer that don't correlate to my full drives. I remember being able to view any recent trip in its entirety in the past but now I can only see clips from when I presumably honked the horn.

This is not great news. I was trying to retire my windshield mounted dash cam and only use the built in system but I guess this is no longer possible due to the dashcam feature downgrade in the Tesla?

 

[Wennfred]

I've been wondering if something was broken with my dashcam. I can only see random clips in the dashcam viewer that don't correlate to my full drives. I remember being able to view any recent trip in its entirety in the past but now I can only see clips from when I presumably honked the horn.

This is not great news. I was trying to retire my windshield mounted dash cam and only use the built in system but I guess this is no longer possible due to the dashcam feature downgrade in the Tesla?

Correct, I was like you, what’s going on, so I submitted a service ticket because I could no longer record the whole trip like we used too, at this time the Sentry mode wouldn’t record at all since I have been working on it so much. They had to do the shutdown from the penthouse and it all came back, but that didn’t fix the DashCam.

So I guess they fixed it so that you can only record that 10 minute clip on the Honk to save or by pressing on the dashcam icon to save to the memory card, this prevents the card from filling up.


Fred

 

[Tony_YYZ]

Correct, I was like you, what’s going on, so I submitted a service ticket because I could no longer record the whole trip like we used too, at this time the Sentry mode wouldn’t record at all since I have been working on it so much. They had to do the shutdown from the penthouse and it all came back, but that didn’t fix the DashCam.

So I guess they fixed it so that you can only record that 10 minute clip on the Honk to save or by pressing on the dashcam icon to save to the memory card, this prevents the card from filling up.


Fred

That's definitely feature regression. Looks like I have to keep my old camera running then. What a shame. Thanks for confirming.

 

[PDB2655]

Just hooked up my dash cam using Seagate 500 GB SSD it working but takes a while to aditave when honking the horn the accident would be over by the time the recording starts. Seems to be a bit faster when I use the camera icon on my screen haven't been able to do any larger type recordings just the small clips it saves. Is this all you get or do I have have set up wrong. I have a windshield camera set up by Cobra in my big truck it record all the time and just cycles threw bit of a pain but seems to be better when I need the video.

 

[Tony_YYZ]

Just hooked up my dash cam using Seagate 500 GB SSD it working but takes a while to aditave when honking the horn the accident would be over by the time the recording starts. Seems to be a bit faster when I use the camera icon on my screen haven't been able to do any larger type recordings just the small clips it saves. Is this all you get or do I have have set up wrong. I have a windshield camera set up by Cobra in my big truck it record all the time and just cycles threw bit of a pain but seems to be better when I need the video.

It will just record clips saved by honking the horn or pressing the camera button. You’ll need an aftermarket camera for always on recording.

 

[Knightshade]

It will just record clips saved by honking the horn or pressing the camera button.

But that would require a time machine.

Which to my knowledge Tesla does not have.

Honking or pressing the camera button moves already recorded footage to the saved folder.

It doesn't retroactively record the previous 10 minutes. How could it?


The car should be always recording if you have a properly configured storage device.

Says so right on page 82 of the owners manual...

Dashcam automatically begins recording when you insert a properly configured USB flash drive into one of the front USB ports

If the car is powered on, there's storage, and you haven't intentionally turned off recording, the car is recording. Always.

The recent folder should have the last 60 minutes (it overwrites after this)

The saved folder is stuff you manually told it to save (here it moves the previous 10 minutes from the recent folder to the saved folder)

The sentry folder is stuff sentry automatically moved (again previous 10 minutes footage) from recent to here when sentry activated.

Page 83-84 of the manual explains the folders.

You’ll need an aftermarket camera for always on recording.

The teslacam system provides always on recording. Just not always on permeant storage.

If you want to record an entire very long drive- yes you'll need an aftermarket system (assuming you don't want the painful exercise of honking every 10 minutes). But it's always recording.

 

[Tony_YYZ]

But that would require a time machine.

Which to my knowledge Tesla does not have.

Honking or pressing the camera button moves already recorded footage to the saved folder.

It doesn't retroactively record the previous 10 minutes. How could it?


The car should be always recording if you have a properly configured storage device.

Says so right on page 82 of the owners manual...



If the car is powered on, there's storage, and you haven't intentionally turned off recording, the car is recording. Always.

The recent folder should have the last 60 minutes (it overwrites after this)

The saved folder is stuff you manually told it to save (here it moves the previous 10 minutes from the recent folder to the saved folder)

The sentry folder is stuff sentry automatically moved (again previous 10 minutes footage) from recent to here when sentry activated.

Page 83-84 of the manual explains the folders.




The teslacam system provides always on recording. Just not always on permeant storage.

If you want to record an entire very long drive- yes you'll need an aftermarket system (assuming you don't want the painful exercise of honking every 10 minutes). But it's always recording.

It always has like an hours worth of footage in its “buffer” but it purges that out. It used to keep all that footage and then the functionality changed at some point. It overwrites that footage immediately on the next drive from my experience.

So if anyone wants always-on recording and that footage to be kept, you can’t rely on the built in dashcam. Having to remember to honk or press the button if an incident occurs and you might not be in the right state of mind is risky. The built in functionality is no longer a true replacement for a 3rd party dashcam like it previously was.

 

[Knightshade]

It always has like an hours worth of footage in its “buffer” but it purges that out. It used to keep all that footage and then the functionality changed at some point. It overwrites that footage immediately on the next drive from my experience.

That's not new.

About the RecentClips folder for the TeslaCam

Thread from 8 months ago discussing this, including guys mentioning it's been that way since teslacam launched.

How to Setup Tesla DashCam and Sentry Mode - Pure Tesla

FAQ from May 2019 mentioning "This footage is continually overwritten and is cleared at the beginning of a new driving session."

I. The built in functionality is no longer a true replacement for a 3rd party dashcam like it previously was.

It never was if what you want is persistent recording of hours of driving without having to hit a button every 10 minutes like a trained pigeon.

There's threads going back to at least last year about this, like guys who wanted to use it to take a long drive along the blueridge parkway and record it for the youtubes being sad that functionality isn't available even as an option.

 

[Tony_YYZ]

That's not new.

About the RecentClips folder for the TeslaCam

Thread from 8 months ago discussing this, including guys mentioning it's been that way since teslacam launched.

How to Setup Tesla DashCam and Sentry Mode - Pure Tesla

FAQ from May 2019 mentioning "This footage is continually overwritten and is cleared at the beginning of a new driving session."




It never was if what you want is persistent recording of hours of driving without having to hit a button every 10 minutes like a trained pigeon.

There's threads going back to at least last year about this, like guys who wanted to use it to take a long drive along the blueridge parkway and record it for the youtubes being sad that functionality isn't available even as an option.

It definitely used to record full drives and keep them until the drive was full. I know this because I’ve pulled several clips from it in the past this way. There are other people in this forum posting up the same behaviour as well.