Dashcam produces spotty recording

[ivolvo]

I have installed a flash drive several months ago and it is always up according to the icon on the screen. However, when I looked at actual recordings, they were of good quality but completely random, only a few and sometimes a few minutes of the actual ride.

Yesterday I also noticed a warning that the write rate on a drive is too slow (which I doubt it is true, it is one of the latest flash drives) but when I reinserted it, the warning sign disappeared.

Two questions.
Tactical: anything to fix this problem, the whole point of a dashcam is to reliable have data in case of an emergency.
Strategic: the level and quality of the software is far below what you would expect from Tesla - when you could perform in real-time collision avoidance, recognize various different objects and promise self-driving capabilities soon - it is probably no too hard to automatically create a directory on a thumb, set up how long you keep your dashcam data until it is deleted; provide reliable software to play it as 3-rd parties do; send notifications from sentry detection and a lot of other useful things I probably didn't figure out yet. Like, analyzing your driving habits and dangerous maneuvres.

 

[Joshan]

Totally agree it could be improved, but we also have to remember this is not something that was ever promised and was given to us for free. At least for those us that owned our car before it was released.

 

[CharleyBC]

There are whole threads here about the reliability and the too-slow warnings and what’s the best USB device. So feel free to dive into those conversations.

As for what it records, remember that it is only keeping the most recent hour of clips, unless you explicitly save something (presumably in response to some event, like an accident or seeing a moose beside the road). Do such a save by tapping the dashcam icon, and then find it later in SavedClips.

 

[ivolvo]

Totally agree it could be improved, but we also have to remember this is not something that was ever promised and was given to us for free. At least for those us that owned our car before it was released.

Agree, but it is something so minor (cameras are there, they stream data that Tesla analyzes, just to store it seems to be not such a complex task) and so obviously beneficial for Tesla to claim yet another advantage that it should be a no brainer to make it right.

 

[Knightshade]

I have installed a flash drive several months ago and it is always up according to the icon on the screen. However, when I looked at actual recordings, they were of good quality but completely random, only a few and sometimes a few minutes of the actual ride.

Yesterday I also noticed a warning that the write rate on a drive is too slow (which I doubt it is true, it is one of the latest flash drives) but when I reinserted it, the warning sign disappeared.

Two questions.
Tactical: anything to fix this problem, the whole point of a dashcam is to reliable have data in case of an emergency.

For the too slow message? Wait for better software.

The too slow thing is relatively new (last month or two) before that folks had plenty of other errors that all largely went away after software updates- so we can expect this will too (since as you note it's absolutely NOT a hardware issue)


(some folks will claim using storage device X works great for them so you should switch to it... but you'll find plenty of folks with every type of storage who've all had one or more of the various issues- again that's because it's a SW issue, not HW)

One thing that MIGHT help a bit- clean out the drive occasionally.... flash storage (all types) does slow down, often by quite a bit, as it gets near to full (75-90% full YMMV though). But that's about it.

Strategic: the level and quality of the software is far below what you would expect from Tesla - when you could perform in real-time collision avoidance, recognize various different objects and promise self-driving capabilities soon - it is probably no too hard to automatically create a directory on a thumb, set up how long you keep your dashcam data until it is deleted; provide reliable software to play it as 3-rd parties do; send notifications from sentry detection and a lot of other useful things I probably didn't figure out yet. Like, analyzing your driving habits and dangerous maneuvres.

Best I can tell the dashcam code is what one intern does on his lunch breaks- since it's essentially a free never-originally-promised bonus feature.

They have made slow, small, steady improvements though... it does automatically create the recent and saved folders, and it used to not delete ANYTHING, ever, that it saved. Now it'll at least overwrite sentry footage if it's old enough and the drive is already nearly full.

Most cars running dashcam are still on HW2.x too though so it's pretty CPU limited in already doing all the things you list- possibly HW3 will see a significant improvement once HW3-specific code comes along but it's unclear how much the AP computer is doing versus the media computer on this stuff.

(it's also another case of Teslas business incompetence leaving money on the table as they could easily charge a monthly fee to store cam video in the cloud and allow remote access- but it took em almost 2 years to figure out how to bill their own customers for an EXISTING service (in car data at all) so I doubt they'll figure out how to set up NEW services to bill anytime soon.

 

[woodguyatl]

For the too slow message? Wait for better software.

The too slow thing is relatively new (last month or two) before that folks had plenty of other errors that all largely went away after software updates- so we can expect this will too (since as you note it's absolutely NOT a hardware issue)


(some folks will claim using storage device X works great for them so you should switch to it... but you'll find plenty of folks with every type of storage who've all had one or more of the various issues- again that's because it's a SW issue, not HW)

One thing that MIGHT help a bit- clean out the drive occasionally.... flash storage (all types) does slow down, often by quite a bit, as it gets near to full (75-90% full YMMV though). But that's about it.






Best I can tell the dashcam code is what one intern does on his lunch breaks- since it's essentially a free never-originally-promised bonus feature.

They have made slow, small, steady improvements though... it does automatically create the recent and saved folders, and it used to not delete ANYTHING, ever, that it saved. Now it'll at least overwrite sentry footage if it's old enough and the drive is already nearly full.

Most cars running dashcam are still on HW2.x too though so it's pretty CPU limited in already doing all the things you list- possibly HW3 will see a significant improvement once HW3-specific code comes along but it's unclear how much the AP computer is doing versus the media computer on this stuff.

(it's also another case of Teslas business incompetence leaving money on the table as they could easily charge a monthly fee to store cam video in the cloud and allow remote access- but it took em almost 2 years to figure out how to bill their own customers for an EXISTING service (in car data at all) so I doubt they'll figure out how to set up NEW services to bill anytime soon.

They still haven’t figured out how to charge me for Supercharging. Granted, I’ve only used it 3 times since buying the car over year ago.

 

[sduck]

Your "Tactical" question: get a decent third party dashcam for reliable real life use. The built in system works ok if you're a hobbyist, but isn't reliable enough even when it's working right.