Dashcam

[Bootneckshuffl]

Hi all, need the expert advice from the forum

ok, so I have my SSD installed for sentry and Dashcam. The drive is recording everything as expected for Sentry but it’s not for Dashcam.

Am I right in saying that Dashcam should be recording every drive I make? It’s not. It’s really random, dates from here and there.

is this normal? Surely not?

 

[AndrewGR]

Only the latest drive can be replayed on Dashcam unless you save it by touching the camera icon or hooting the horn.

 

[MrBadger]

Sounds normal.

Whilst dashcam should be continuously be recording, it is also continuously deleting, so it only keeps around 60 minutes of the most recent drive footage, which use to (not sure if it still does) continuously delete even after the drive.

So the only way to keep up to 10 minute segments from the drive, is to actively save it, eith by hitting save footage on dashcam many, or, if enabled, honking the horn.

TeslaCam is not a dashcam competitor, it is an after thought implemented in a Tesla specific way that gets very little love from Tesla. Its only recently that we got the ability to view footage in the car.

 

[Bootneckshuffl]

Sounds normal.

Whilst dashcam should be continuously be recording, it is also continuously deleting, so it only keeps around 60 minutes of the most recent drive footage, which use to (not sure if it still does) continuously delete even after the drive.

So the only way to keep up to 10 minute segments from the drive, is to actively save it, eith by hitting save footage on dashcam many, or, if enabled, honking the horn.

TeslaCam is not a dashcam competitor, it is an after thought implemented in a Tesla specific way that gets very little love from Tesla. Its only recently that we got the ability to view footage in the car.

Right

not sure what’s going on with mine then cos I’m not getting the most recent. For example, I’ve got a huge gap between 12 Oct and 13 Nov, a whole month. I check the viewer when I’m finished my drive and there’s nothing there for that drive. Should there be?

 

[Type2]

Teslacam is very poorly implemented. It works when it wants to. I often have missing clips, even after attempting to save them, and playback often jumps randomly forward, missing chunks of footage.

I really don’t get Tesla’s thinking sometimes. With the extra cameras it could be class leading, but instead it isn’t fit for purpose. Either implement it properly and make it 100% reliable or don’t bother with it at all.

 

[Drew57]

Right

not sure what’s going on with mine then cos I’m not getting the most recent. For example, I’ve got a huge gap between 12 Oct and 13 Nov, a whole month. I check the viewer when I’m finished my drive and there’s nothing there for that drive. Should there be?

That's normal I believe - to see the most recent journey - before leaving the car press the dashcam icon to save it. It is then available for viewing then or later.

In my case, if I don't press save then the journey has been auto deleted by the time I next time I attempt to see it.

 

[nxsynjs]

That's normal I believe - to see the most recent journey - before leaving the car press the dashcam icon to save it. It is then available for viewing then or later.

In my case, if I don't press save then the journey has been auto deleted by the time I next time I attempt to see it.

I think the requirement to do that is a rather big flaw. In the event of an accident it relies on the presence of mind of an accident victim to press save or honk the horn to save potentially vital evidence. It really should continue to save until the storage is full and over write the oldest.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

I think the requirement to do that is a rather big flaw. In the event of an accident it relies on the presence of mind of an accident victim to press save or honk the horn to save potentially vital evidence. It really should continue to save until the storage is full and over write the oldest.

I agree. The only time I've really had to rely on dashcam footage was after an accident, where a day or so later the person that was 100% to blame changed their story and tried to make out that I'd caused it. The dashcam footage was still on the memory card, and that clearly showed that I was stationary at the time, and had been for a time. When I produced the dashcam footage the other person's story changed immediately and her insurers paid up (very promptly as it happens).

I didn't even think about the dashcam at the time, and had to go and recover it from the garage to which my car had been recovered. Bit of a miracle that it was OK, as the windscreen had smashed and I found the camera on the floor of the car. I very much doubt that the Tesla dashcam would have recorded anything useful in such a scenario.

 

[Dilly]

Perhaps someone could tweet Elon. It should be a fairly basic bit of programming to implement!

 

[Durzel]

Learn something new every day.

I had assumed that the car recorded every journey I'd made, without any intervention required. I didn't realise it only recorded the last journey, and then only up to 60 minutes.

Would this mean that it is entirely pointless partitioning a decent size SSD so that the dashcam partition has anything more than a reasonable amount of storage? (I note the USB stick in 2021 Model 3s is 64GB, even that sounds excessive?)

 

[MrBadger]

Would this mean that it is entirely pointless partitioning a decent size SSD so that the dashcam partition has anything more than a reasonable amount of storage? (I note the USB stick in 2021 Model 3s is 64GB, even that sounds excessive?)

Basically yes. The advantage that a larger media drive has is that it would slow the overwrite process which would increase the longevity of the media drive. But with a sensibly selected media drive, they would last a reasonable amount of time anyway.

A large TeslaCam partition would allow more clips to be saved, but, they very quickly lose their pertinence so the car overwriting stale ones quicker with a smaller partition is probably a benefit.

 

[Drew57]

I use a SanDisk Ultra 64gB & after nearly 8 months it's still 75% empty (always seems to work when needed to save or review)

 

[Durzel]

I'll repartition mine then I guess. Think I gave it something ridiculous like 150GB anticipating daily drive videos, etc (with lockdown that didn't happen either)

 

[Glan gluaisne]

FWIW, my old 1080p dashcam ran on a 32GB Samsung µSD card for around 4 years before the card packed up. That was recording for around an hour per day on average during that time. IIRC, the card would hold at least a weeks worth of trips before the older recording got over-written. It's a pity that Teslacam doesn't just work the same way, continuously recording to the storage device in chunks, without needing driver intervention to ensure recordings are saved. Most of the time all that's needed is a few hours of saved video, as if there was an incident it's unlikely that the driver wouldn't want to access the video of it fairly soon, in terms of driving time, afterwards..

 

[s88ats]

This is an interesting topic as I was about to order yet another pi to install TeslaCam on.

Currently, I'm using a 128 GB endurance SD but brought a Samsung T5 500 GB SSD to replace it with. I then realised I didn't need the SSD as the SD was nowhere near being filled up, even with I had sentry always on! I then noticed none of the dashcam footage was being saved, and only recorded the last 10 mins when I manually tapped the dashcam button.

After a bit of research, I had come across a fork of TeslaCam which seemed to have the answers;

• Save the hr long dashcam footage as a traditional dashcam would automatically
• Sync and backup these when connected to my home/hotspot network

I have however noticed quite a bit of negativity around it though. I've come across a mixture of posts saying it's unreliable, not working as it should, or not well maintained. I would hate to be in a scenario where it doesn't work at the time I need it to.

I didn't think I would need to get separate dashcams when our Teslas already have it, but I am seriously considering it. Does anyone have any suggestions or workarounds?

 

[craigwbaker]

Reading this with interest as I am trying to get a M3 with work. I run a dashcam now and it has saved me a few times on none fault accidents and reports to companies for near accidents. I (wrongly it seems) assumed the same, it was recording all the time and I could lose one of the leads in the car, along with 2 for the phones I run (work and mine). Looks like (assuming I get one) mine will be kept.

 

[Zakalwe]

I can see both sides of this. one part of me thinks "another example of Tesla not doing what every other maker does!". The flipside is, have you ever tried to go back through a week/months worth of recordings to find that one 10 minute segment that you need?

 

[nxsynjs]

I use the automated raspberry pi zero teslacam that automatically uploads sentry and dash cam footage to a PC at home. There are variations that will also upload to AWS so you can get a cloud storage solution also.

I also use tesla-dashcam to combine all the footage into a single MP4 file. so what happens is that once all my footage is uploaded the PC runs the program to merge each sentry/dashcam save into a single MP4

I have a script that runs on the raspberry pi zero that copies/moves out the RecentClips (where the dashcam footage is stored) to another directory so it then fills up the SSD with dashcam footage before deleting the oldest version(it'll store about 5 hours before it loops) currently testing it, but i'm hopeful it'll help. The biggest issue atm is the scheduling, but i'm getting here(famous last words)

Also, I will admit i've found the video quality poor when compared to an aftermarket dashcam

 

[s88ats]

I use the automated raspberry pi zero teslacam that automatically uploads sentry and dash cam footage to a PC at home. There are variations that will also upload to AWS so you can get a cloud storage solution also.

I also use tesla-dashcam to combine all the footage into a single MP4 file. so what happens is that once all my footage is uploaded the PC runs the program to merge each sentry/dashcam save into a single MP4

I have a script that runs on the raspberry pi zero that copies/moves out the RecentClips (where the dashcam footage is stored) to another directory so it then fills up the SSD with dashcam footage before deleting the oldest version(it'll store about 5 hours before it loops) currently testing it, but i'm hopeful it'll help. The biggest issue atm is the scheduling, but i'm getting here(famous last words)

This is preciously what I would want to try and implement. Does the footage then get backed up from the new directory?
What do you mean by scheduling btw?

I'm guessing this isn't noob friendly.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

I use the automated raspberry pi zero teslacam that automatically uploads sentry and dash cam footage to a PC at home. There are variations that will also upload to AWS so you can get a cloud storage solution also.

I also use tesla-dashcam to combine all the footage into a single MP4 file. so what happens is that once all my footage is uploaded the PC runs the program to merge each sentry/dashcam save into a single MP4

I have a script that runs on the raspberry pi zero that copies/moves out the RecentClips (where the dashcam footage is stored) to another directory so it then fills up the SSD with dashcam footage before deleting the oldest version(it'll store about 5 hours before it loops) currently testing it, but i'm hopeful it'll help. The biggest issue atm is the scheduling, but i'm getting here(famous last words)

Also, I will admit i've found the video quality poor when compared to an aftermarket dashcam

I started off using Teslacam, back around January this year, running on a Pi Zero W, storing clips and syncing music with a NAS on our LAN running OpenMediaVault, but switched to a Samsung T5 SSD, because I found that Teslacam wasn't that reliable. I'd be very interested to hear how you get on with shifting clips to an SSD, as that seems like a more robust solution, especially for times when the car's away from home for a while.