(moderator note)
Special thanks to @Knightshade , for taking the time to write up a description of how Sentry and Dashcam interact together. There is a lot of confusion about these two features, and how they interact together. I asked @Knightshade who has a good understanding of how these features interact, to write up a general explanation of how they interact together.
Please note that any questions on "what USB drive do I use / is best for Dashcam, etc should be directed to the stickied thread that we have on that topic, which can be found here in this subforum, here:
teslamotorsclub.com
Thank you again, @Knightshade for taking the time to write this up for us!
=====================================================================================
(explanation on dashcam and sentry mode, from @Knightshade )
How video recording works on your Tesla:
The fundamental thing to understand is the only thing that ever records video to your USB stick is Dashcam.
Sentry does not record anything- ever.
Not being aware of the above is at the heart of a lot of posts and questions here. More details below:
If your car is awake/on, and dashcam is turned on, it is always recording to the USB storage, in the recent folder. This is the only folder video is ever recorded to.
Any footage in there older than 1 hour is automatically overwritten.
You can manually "save" the last 10 minutes of dashcam footage by either tapping the dashcam icon or by (if you enabled this option in settings) honking your horn. You can also via settings have it auto-save the last 10 minutes in case of an accident. All these types of saves involve the last 10 minutes of recent footage being moved from the recent folder to the "saved" folder. Things in the saved folder are never overwritten.
Ok- what about sentry?
Sentry does several things. None of them record video.
One though is to keep the car awake when you leave/lock it. So that dashcam keeps recording in that recent folder with the 1 hour loop.
Another is, if Sentry goes to alert mode, it will move the last 10 minutes of dashcam footage from recent to the Sentry folder. This footage in Sentry does not get overwritten UNLESS the drive is nearly full.
Note if your dashcam is not working, or not turned on, all OTHER functions of sentry still work. It still can be turned on, it still does the flash of lights and warning when it goes to alert mode, it still blasts classical music if it goes to alarm mode. Since Sentry doesn't record video it doesn't warn you when nothing is being recorded. You need to insure dashcam is on and recording if you want sentry to do anything with your video recordings.
If you are not getting video recorded, that is NOT a sentry problem- it is a dashcam problem. Because only dashcam, ever, records video.
As a last note- Both because sentry will overwrite things stored in the sentry folder when the storage is nearly full, and because flash storage inherently slows down as it fills up, you should probably make a point of clearing off your storage on some regular basis, trying not to let it get more than say 3/4 full if you can help it. How often this will need to be done depends on how much storage you have, how often you manually save footage, and how often sentry triggers to do so. For some people you might only need to clean it out a few times a year, for others it might be significantly more often.
Special thanks to @Knightshade , for taking the time to write up a description of how Sentry and Dashcam interact together. There is a lot of confusion about these two features, and how they interact together. I asked @Knightshade who has a good understanding of how these features interact, to write up a general explanation of how they interact together.
Please note that any questions on "what USB drive do I use / is best for Dashcam, etc should be directed to the stickied thread that we have on that topic, which can be found here in this subforum, here:
MASTER THREAD: USB drives that work with Sentry and TeslaCam
A few days ago this message showed up: “Dashcam: USB drive is too slow to save-please use a drive with higher write speed” Then I tried to format the usb stick but it still didn’t work. The worked flawlessly for months until now. Any suggestions? Thanks.
teslamotorsclub.com
Thank you again, @Knightshade for taking the time to write this up for us!
=====================================================================================
(explanation on dashcam and sentry mode, from @Knightshade )
How video recording works on your Tesla:
The fundamental thing to understand is the only thing that ever records video to your USB stick is Dashcam.
Sentry does not record anything- ever.
Not being aware of the above is at the heart of a lot of posts and questions here. More details below:
If your car is awake/on, and dashcam is turned on, it is always recording to the USB storage, in the recent folder. This is the only folder video is ever recorded to.
Any footage in there older than 1 hour is automatically overwritten.
You can manually "save" the last 10 minutes of dashcam footage by either tapping the dashcam icon or by (if you enabled this option in settings) honking your horn. You can also via settings have it auto-save the last 10 minutes in case of an accident. All these types of saves involve the last 10 minutes of recent footage being moved from the recent folder to the "saved" folder. Things in the saved folder are never overwritten.
Ok- what about sentry?
Sentry does several things. None of them record video.
One though is to keep the car awake when you leave/lock it. So that dashcam keeps recording in that recent folder with the 1 hour loop.
Another is, if Sentry goes to alert mode, it will move the last 10 minutes of dashcam footage from recent to the Sentry folder. This footage in Sentry does not get overwritten UNLESS the drive is nearly full.
Note if your dashcam is not working, or not turned on, all OTHER functions of sentry still work. It still can be turned on, it still does the flash of lights and warning when it goes to alert mode, it still blasts classical music if it goes to alarm mode. Since Sentry doesn't record video it doesn't warn you when nothing is being recorded. You need to insure dashcam is on and recording if you want sentry to do anything with your video recordings.
If you are not getting video recorded, that is NOT a sentry problem- it is a dashcam problem. Because only dashcam, ever, records video.
As a last note- Both because sentry will overwrite things stored in the sentry folder when the storage is nearly full, and because flash storage inherently slows down as it fills up, you should probably make a point of clearing off your storage on some regular basis, trying not to let it get more than say 3/4 full if you can help it. How often this will need to be done depends on how much storage you have, how often you manually save footage, and how often sentry triggers to do so. For some people you might only need to clean it out a few times a year, for others it might be significantly more often.
