FSD Beta not working in low light conditions

[ArthurVan]

My Tesla 2022 Model Y Long Range was accepted into the FSD Beta program on June 4, 2022. Daytime FSD Beta works well having used it for hundreds of miles.

The interior cabin camera works improperly in low light conditions (dusk and night).

Shortly after engaging FSD Beta in low light conditions, a loud beep and large red steering wheel appear and intermittent messages of: 1. "Cabin camera is covered or blocked; Uncover camera to engage Autopilot" (small blue steering wheel appears next to the message); and 2: "Take Over Immediately" (red triangle with exclamation point appears next to the message). Pictures attached show the errors.

The messages persist despite verifying the cabin camera is clear of any dust, as well as moving the steering wheel or the scroll wheel to indicate my presence.

The issue happens every time FSD Beta is engaged at dusk or night--at least a dozen times. I did a scroll wheel resent; the problem persists despite the reset. Tesla Mobile Service did not find a hardware problem with the cabin camera, but otherwise couldn't resolve the problem. I've emailed [email protected] with this description but haven't heard back.

Anyone else experiencing FSD Beta problems in low light conditions?

 

[Tam]

..."Cabin camera is covered or blocked; Uncover camera to engage Autopilot" (small blue steering wheel appears next to the message)...

Tesla has fixed this problem by adding 2 Infrared LEDs to the cabin camera for 2021 and after Model S and X.

It's unknown when they will do that for 3 and Y.

In the meantime, can you experiment with supplemental lights and see if that would fix the problem.

 

[ArthurVan]

Tesla has fixed this problem by adding 2 Infrared LEDs to the cabin camera for 2021 and after Model S and X.

It's unknown when they will do that for 3 and Y.

In the meantime, can you experiment with supplemental lights and see if that would fix the problem.

Thank you! That's the first I'm hearing that it was a Model S & X issue, yet fixed with infrared LEDs. I'm encouraged that my issue will be resolved, too. I'm familiar with supplemental lights--such as aiming a small reading light in the general vicinity of the cabin camera.

 

[TresLA]

I have not experienced this issue in our FSD beta 2018 Model 3. You might want to submit a ticket to get the in cabin camera checked

 

[JohnB007]

Actually I have experienced this during the last road trip. It was around 10pm coming back home, a 3 hour trip. Just as you mentioned, I couldn't use FSD Beta but I was able to turn it off, so I used non beta AP instead, which works fine on highways.

I assumed it was a bug in cabin camera code. I hope they have a solution for this.

 

[ArthurVan]

I have not experienced this issue in our FSD beta 2018 Model 3. You might want to submit a ticket to get the in cabin camera checked

I submitted a ticket both to Tesla Mobile Service (came to my house, verified cann camera worked and did nothing more) and [email protected] (never heard back).

 

[boonedocks]

My late(er) night FSD issues are camera based but show up as “one or more side cameras occluded”. Lots of pics and time stamps sent to my service center and nothing back yet. Not a “one time” occurrence as well as my car was pristinely clean.

 

[Dewg]

My late(er) night FSD issues are camera based but show up as “one or more side cameras occluded”. Lots of pics and time stamps sent to my service center and nothing back yet. Not a “one time” occurrence as well as my car was pristinely clean.


View attachment 828270View attachment 828272

You're doing exactly what you need to do. When the error appears, check the 3 cameras you can access via the camera button - make sure they are showing up correctly. Use the voice button and say "bug report", and note the date/time. Let the service center know you have a bug report so they can analyze the telemetry and see if there is a camera problem.

 

[Mr. Michael]

I get this way too much on my exterior cameras as well. When I report it, I am told that being in FSD beta, the problems are all due to that. When I am driving the black, dark (no streetlights or moon), it seems to think that getting nothing from the cameras is a problem, rather than actual darkness.

 

[nvx1977]

Tesla has fixed this problem by adding 2 Infrared LEDs to the cabin camera for 2021 and after Model S and X.

It's unknown when they will do that for 3 and Y.

In the meantime, can you experiment with supplemental lights and see if that would fix the problem.

They did not "fix" this problem, as the vast majority of FSDb users do not have this issue with the interior cabin camera at night. Yes, the IR emitters are in the refreshed S and X to see through sunglasses and to see at night where your eyes are looking, but for cars without IR emitters, you shouldn't be getting errors from the cabin camera.

@ArthurVan this is a one-off issue with your car. Your only recourse is to have a service center run diags on the cabin camera. Unfortunately from what I've heard, service centers tend to be dismissive of issues related to FSDb because it's usually out of their control. You have to convince them you have a hardware error unrelated to the FSDb firmware.

If I were to guess, for a typical car without IR emitters driving at night, the cabin camera can tell that it's just dark (though bits of ambient and transient lights). It can differentiate between that and having a cover over the camera, which it can tell by detecting no light ever. But with your camera, it somehow can't tell you're just driving in the dark. Most likely the cabin camera's exposure sensitivity is off, so the image is entirely clipped black at night, making it look just like a camera cover. During the day, the camera would appear to work fine, maybe with a slightly underexposed image that no one would really notice.

Exterior cameras are a different story. It is common, particularly for the side cameras, to complain in poorly lit areas at night. Usually though this doesn't hamper FSDb's ability to drive (it doesn't disable itself).

 

[Silicon Desert]

You reminded me of another humorously odd issue with FSD beta, If I turn on the windshield wipers accidentally, I see a message that reads something to the effect that FSD beta is temporarily disabled due to weather conditions. It can be a beautiful bright sunny day, yet just a single sweep of the wipers going across the center camera is enough to fool it. Then a couple seconds later, the message goes away.

 

[Dewg]

You reminded me of another humorously odd issue with FSD beta, If I turn on the windshield wipers accidentally, I see a message that reads something to the effect that FSD beta is temporarily disabled due to weather conditions. It can be a beautiful bright sunny day, yet just a single sweep of the wipers going across the center camera is enough to fool it. Then a couple seconds later, the message goes away.

Hmmm... I'm going to try this before I wash the car next time.

 

[ArthurVan]

They did not "fix" this problem, as the vast majority of FSDb users do not have this issue with the interior cabin camera at night. Yes, the IR emitters are in the refreshed S and X to see through sunglasses and to see at night where your eyes are looking, but for cars without IR emitters, you shouldn't be getting errors from the cabin camera.

@ArthurVan this is a one-off issue with your car. Your only recourse is to have a service center run diags on the cabin camera. Unfortunately from what I've heard, service centers tend to be dismissive of issues related to FSDb because it's usually out of their control. You have to convince them you have a hardware error unrelated to the FSDb firmware.

If I were to guess, for a typical car without IR emitters driving at night, the cabin camera can tell that it's just dark (though bits of ambient and transient lights). It can differentiate between that and having a cover over the camera, which it can tell by detecting no light ever. But with your camera, it somehow can't tell you're just driving in the dark. Most likely the cabin camera's exposure sensitivity is off, so the image is entirely clipped black at night, making it look just like a camera cover. During the day, the camera would appear to work fine, maybe with a slightly underexposed image that no one would really notice.

Exterior cameras are a different story. It is common, particularly for the side cameras, to complain in poorly lit areas at night. Usually though this doesn't hamper FSDb's ability to drive (it doesn't disable itself).

Thank you @nvx1977. I believe you are understanding the issue correctly. FSD works the same on my car in day and night settings. FSDb is when the problem occurs. I drove on FSDb with the reading lights on and the error went away. Your comments are helpful. My plan is to wait until FSDb is more widely distributed and be persistent with Tesla Service requesting the fix the issue. As you noted, Tesla Service specifically excused themselves saying they have little experience with FSDb, thus couldn't help me. With wider FSDb distribution, I'm hopeful they will take responsibility.

 

[Dewg]

Thank you @nvx1977. I believe you are understanding the issue correctly. FSD works the same on my car in day and night settings. FSDb is when the problem occurs. I drove on FSDb with the reading lights on and the error went away. Your comments are helpful. My plan is to wait until FSDb is more widely distributed and be persistent with Tesla Service requesting the fix the issue. As you noted, Tesla Service specifically excused themselves saying they have little experience with FSDb, thus couldn't help me. With wider FSDb distribution, I'm hopeful they will take responsibility.

There are a few others on the forums that have said they've had service replace the cabin camera and the problem went away.

 

[archae86]

ArthurVan, I found this thread after I had made a post on the FSDBeta 10.69 thread. I believe my experience is very, very similar to your report. I have not yet attempted to engage Tesla Service.

Did you ever get a useful response from service? Does the problem continue for your.

As I don't quite know how to provide a link to my post, I'll just copy it here verbatim.

*******************************************************

I've done very little night-time driving under FSDb since I was admitted to 10.12.2 in mid-June. But I had a couple of alarming forced disengagements on a night-time return from a rehearsal Tuesday about ten days ago. Then returning from the same rehearsal this most recent Tuesday, now driving 10.69.1.1, I disengaged twice on the same road as a week earlier, plus once out on the Interstate.

I surmised that the unifying cause was that the cabin illumination level fell too low for the system to consider itself working. I have had zero events of this distinctive kind in many hours of daylight FSDb driving, and for my two trips home at night the 5 events were on some of the darker places. But by no means dark. One was an urban Interstate about 9 p.m. , the other four on Paseo del Norte, which is a major arterial road here in Albuquerque, with two lanes each direction and a median and considerable traffic.

For a bit of testing last night, I drove in my neighborhood, Sandia Heights, which lacks street lights and where houses by both covenant and custom show little in the way of lights. I found that I could only drive a few seconds in FSDb before getting an event, while I could drive for minutes if either of the two dome (map) lights was on. So I consider the inadequate ambient illumination hypothesis very strongly indicated.

The event is quite distinctive, with three sequential notifications:

1. There is a raucous noise, and the red steering wheel of death appears, with the notification "Take Control Immediately"
2. There is a popup message with content similar to "Autosteer abort for system error"
3. There is a separate popup message advising:
Main: Cabin Camera is covered or blinded
Subtext: Uncover camera to engage Autopilot

While I had carried a dimmable headlamp with both red and white illumination imagining I could find a positioning and dimming level at which it would allow FSDb operation, my efforts failed. I was placing it on the phone charging station, which may not have given a suitable direction of illumination, as it did not help even when providing appreciable light. I did not experiment with other sources of cabin light increase aside from the dome lights.

Possibilities:
a. all FSDb installations behave this way, but many of you don't use it at night, or use it in more brightly lit places. (I know Omar has posted San Francisco city street videos at night, but suspect the ambient light there is much higher than in my I-25 or Paseo del Norte failure locations).
b. my car is defective, either by failing to provide sufficient IR illumination from two sources that an online video claims should be present in my car, or in some other way suffering lowered camera sensitivity.

Already this situation has helped to cost me the willing passengership of the man I was driving home from rehearsal this week. We live near each other, and it makes all kinds of sense to carpool, but he politely but firmly advised me that in the future he would be driving himself.

I consider FSDb not suitable for my nighttime use in this condition, which is a real surprise and disappointment.

 

[DMNAZ]

I just got enrolled in the FSDb on Monday and have had no issues during the day. Tonight I was driving with my wife to show her how it works and I got the dreadEd red steering wheel warning telling me my cabin camera is blocked or covered. It is not. I assume that lowlight or no light conditions do not currently work with this release. I would think that using FSD at night to get used to it would be better because there is less traffic where I live. I guess I was wrong.

 

[archae86]

I just got enrolled in the FSDb on Monday and have had no issues during the day. Tonight I was driving with my wife to show her how it works and I got the dreadEd red steering wheel warning telling me my cabin camera is blocked or covered. It is not. I assume that lowlight or no light conditions do not currently work with this release. I would think that using FSD at night to get used to it would be better because there is less traffic where I live. I guess I was wrong.

What model do you have and when was it built? My Y Long-range was built in Fremont in early 2022 and has this problem very badly. It is widely reported that months before that the 3 and Y models adopted IR illuminators which had previously appeared in the refresh S and X. I imagined that my IR illuminators were not working and scheduled service, but the appointment was cancelled on the grounds that the car's log did not show a hardware problem. That despite the fact that the tech saw six instances of the the autosteer abort for this reason. He further said he had never seen an IR illuminator on a Tesla (and implied he did not believe any had them).

In my case, I got the failure only once in three trials of driving a 5-mile stretch of urban interstate at night, but got it six times in driving a four-mile stretch of urban 4-lane divided arterial, and could not drive more than a few seconds in my zero street light neighborhood. without getting it.

I'm still not clear on whether your and my car share a hardware defect which could be fixed, or whether this is the general condition of Teslas driving FSDb at night in less than San Francisco/Palo Alto levels of night illumination.

 

[DMNAZ]

I have a Fremont MYP. Built in 03/2022. I will try driving at night a few more times and hopefully if it continues I will schedule a service. The road I was driving on was 2 lanes each side with a divider in the middle. Drove the same road yesterday and this morning and FSD worked perfectly. Im not expecting it to be perfect since it is beta but I do think I should be able to drive with it at night.

 

[ArthurVan]

ArthurVan, I found this thread after I had made a post on the FSDBeta 10.69 thread. I believe my experience is very, very similar to your report. I have not yet attempted to engage Tesla Service.

Did you ever get a useful response from service? Does the problem continue for your.

As I don't quite know how to provide a link to my post, I'll just copy it here verbatim.

*******************************************************

I've done very little night-time driving under FSDb since I was admitted to 10.12.2 in mid-June. But I had a couple of alarming forced disengagements on a night-time return from a rehearsal Tuesday about ten days ago. Then returning from the same rehearsal this most recent Tuesday, now driving 10.69.1.1, I disengaged twice on the same road as a week earlier, plus once out on the Interstate.

I surmised that the unifying cause was that the cabin illumination level fell too low for the system to consider itself working. I have had zero events of this distinctive kind in many hours of daylight FSDb driving, and for my two trips home at night the 5 events were on some of the darker places. But by no means dark. One was an urban Interstate about 9 p.m. , the other four on Paseo del Norte, which is a major arterial road here in Albuquerque, with two lanes each direction and a median and considerable traffic.

For a bit of testing last night, I drove in my neighborhood, Sandia Heights, which lacks street lights and where houses by both covenant and custom show little in the way of lights. I found that I could only drive a few seconds in FSDb before getting an event, while I could drive for minutes if either of the two dome (map) lights was on. So I consider the inadequate ambient illumination hypothesis very strongly indicated.

The event is quite distinctive, with three sequential notifications:

1. There is a raucous noise, and the red steering wheel of death appears, with the notification "Take Control Immediately"
2. There is a popup message with content similar to "Autosteer abort for system error"
3. There is a separate popup message advising:
Main: Cabin Camera is covered or blinded
Subtext: Uncover camera to engage Autopilot

While I had carried a dimmable headlamp with both red and white illumination imagining I could find a positioning and dimming level at which it would allow FSDb operation, my efforts failed. I was placing it on the phone charging station, which may not have given a suitable direction of illumination, as it did not help even when providing appreciable light. I did not experiment with other sources of cabin light increase aside from the dome lights.

Possibilities:
a. all FSDb installations behave this way, but many of you don't use it at night, or use it in more brightly lit places. (I know Omar has posted San Francisco city street videos at night, but suspect the ambient light there is much higher than in my I-25 or Paseo del Norte failure locations).
b. my car is defective, either by failing to provide sufficient IR illumination from two sources that an online video claims should be present in my car, or in some other way suffering lowered camera sensitivity.

Already this situation has helped to cost me the willing passengership of the man I was driving home from rehearsal this week. We live near each other, and it makes all kinds of sense to carpool, but he politely but firmly advised me that in the future he would be driving himself.

I consider FSDb not suitable for my nighttime use in this condition, which is a real surprise and disappointment.

Yes, we seem to have the same issue. Tesla Service came to my house in July 2022, couldn’t fix it and excused themselves saying they aren’t trained to fix FSDb issues. I’m going to try Tesla service again now that there is wide distribution.

 

[pumpedup]

I took delivery of Model X June 2022 long range model. I have had FSD for 6 weeks now or more.

I have had the camera bug shut down FSD driving on dark rural road everytime I drive on a darl road since the last update. I got the "Cabin camera is covered or blocked; Uncover camera to engage Autopilot" .

Tried to fix by shutting down....then leaving lights on in the cabin. FSD did work until the next day.

I have had the Tesla long enough to report clearly service is terrible..... I have had to fix bugs myself by web search and trial and error reboot.

Does Tesla have any phone support?

Driving to service center since I live 200 mi from Atlanta GA and the same from Charlotte NC is pain.

I have FSD Beta 10.69.3.1