Jeda just released a new USB hub. Mounts Flush and hides flash drive

[Knightshade]

The problem with high endurance micro sd is they only seem to be available in 128gb. might as well just get a 256gb usb3 thumb dive for 1/2 the price?

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Endurance-128GB-Micro-Adapter/dp/B07B984HJ5

35 bucks for 128GB Endurance Pro from Samsung, say another 10 bucks for an SD->USB adapter.


Most 256GB thumb drives I'm seeing run in the 30-50 buck range depending on brand/warranty (Samsung is 50, some cheap ones are 30, some more in between), so not really half price


But yeah if your only application is tesla dash cam, 256GB with even a 1000 write cycle limit would take you well over 14 years at say 9 hours a day of use. Even at HALF the rated life (or double the likely amount of use) you're still gonna have it last longer than the average american even keeps a car for.

The Endurance Pro card, say it only hits the lower-end of the average for the better type of flash, you'd be looking at ~21 years at 9 hours a day of use... (3x the # of cycles, but it uses them twice as fast) or still over a decade at double use or half expected life.

 

[Glamisduner]

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Endurance-128GB-Micro-Adapter/dp/B07B984HJ5

35 bucks for 128GB Endurance Pro from Samsung, say another 10 bucks for an SD->USB adapter.


Most 256GB thumb drives I'm seeing run in the 30-50 buck range depending on brand/warranty (Samsung is 50, some cheap ones are 30, some more in between), so not really half price


But yeah if your only application is tesla dash cam, 256GB with even a 1000 write cycle limit would take you well over 14 years at say 9 hours a day of use. Even at HALF the rated life (or double the likely amount of use) you're still gonna have it last longer than the average american even keeps a car for.

The Endurance Pro card, say it only hits the lower-end of the average for the better type of flash, you'd be looking at ~21 years at 9 hours a day of use... (3x the # of cycles, but it uses them twice as fast) or still over a decade at double use or half expected life.

Only 30 for the 256gb usb3 thumb drive I linked above? That's cheaper and twice the space, hence 1/2 the price.

One night have longer over all life but they other will take way longer to fill up and become unusable which might be more important?

I hesitated and now the price went back to $38. Oh well I'll just keep an eye out for another sale I guess. The 128gb usb version is $13 though.

 

[n00bie]

@Kognos
"It's idle an awful lot." You're on to something...I read that SSD drives have various schemes of caching reads and writes from/to flash memory chips, to increase speed and reduce the amount of actual writes.

According to Tesla Dashcam page,

each minute of video recorded uses approximately 30 MB; the 1-HOUR CIRCULAR BUFFER requires ~1.8 GB of free space

so basically, it's not processing or saving (or actually writing to the disk?) during the 1-hour circular buffer, but filling up buffer @a much faster rate than writing to the disk.

Recordings not downloaded after an hour will be deleted

It doesn't overwrite current recording until an hour elapses. Hitting the save button icon, allows you to save(or process) the last 10 minutes from buffer. 10-minutes of video requires approximately 300 MB (just dashcam alone). 10 video files, 1-minute file each @30 MB. The guy @TeslaTap.com was saying to take a snapshot, these require copying 30 huge video files (read and writing) while still recording three 720P video streams.

Of course, faster drives write out data faster from the buffer.

 

[Knightshade]

According to Tesla Dashcam page,

so basically, it's not processing or saving (or actually writing to the disk?) during the 1-hour circular buffer, but filling up buffer @a much faster rate than writing to the disk.

Uh... no.

That's not, at all, how that works.

It means the USB key always has the last hour of footage on it.

It overwrites it continuously (well, every 1 minute, since that's how long each clip is).

Not sure where you think a 1.8 gig buffer would even exist...but that number isn't even correct (and hasn't been since Tesla went to 3 cameras)....it uses 1.8 gigs per camera so 1 hour for 3 cameras is 5.4 gigs.

It doesn't overwrite current recording until an hour elapses.

Again... no.

If that were true and you pull the drive out after 30 minutes of running, you'd have NO recent clips.

Instead you'll find you have the most recent 28-30 minutes (depending when precisely you yanked it)


Every minute it runs, it overwrites the oldest 1 minute of the last 1 hour of recordings on the drive.

The guy @TeslaTap.com was saying to take a snapshot, these require copying 30 huge video files (read and writing) while still recording three 720P video streams.

The guy at teslatap is wrong yet again then.

The files are already on the drive

The only thing saving them does is a move operation, which is vastly less data transfer than writing them in the first place (which, again it's already doing every 1 minute)

 

[n00bie]

@Knightshade
agree on the DATA are already on the drive inside that 1.8 GB of space, but wasn't sure if they are written into files.

each minute of video recorded uses approximately 30 MB

had to reread, so record continuously read/writing into the 1-HOUR CIRCULAR BUFFER 1.8 GB.

While Data stored in circular buffer can be accessed quickly, but not so sure when saving/writing/processing them into files. I mean you’d have to extract data from the circular buffer? Are save files outside of the 1.8 gig. The guy @TeslaTap.com said copy. Two people here said move.

my work here is done.

 

[Knightshade]

@Knightshade
agree on the DATA are already on the drive inside that 1.8 GB of space, but wasn't sure if they are written into files.

Not sure where else you think they'd be?

And again it's 5.4GB for an hour using 3 cameras.

had to reread, so record continuously read/writing into the 1-HOUR CIRCULAR BUFFER 1.8 GB.

5.4... 30 MB per minute times 60 minutes is 1.8GB....PER CAMERA... 3 cameras.... 3x1.8=5.4 and the "buffer" is 1 hours worth of actual 1 minute video files in the recent clips folder.

While Data stored in circular buffer can be accessed quickly, but not so sure when saving/writing/processing them into files.

They are already files.

What other form do you imagine over 5 gigs of video clips can exist as on an SSD?

Saving just relocates (via a move) those video clips from recent folder to saved folder.

I mean you’d have to extract data from the circular buffer?

The 'circular buffer' is just a folder on the drive that gets overwritten so as to always have the 60 most recent 1 minute clips from each camera.

The guy @TeslaTap.com said copy.

The guy at teslatap doesn't seem terribly up on computer tech (see also his suggesting you "need" a drive that reads/writes over 20x faster than the system is capable of supplying data) and he also needs to update his page since the car using 3 cameras now.

 

[lukex4]

And again it's 5.4GB for an hour using 3 cameras.
[...]
5.4... 30 MB per minute times 60 minutes is 1.8GB....PER CAMERA... 3 cameras.... 3x1.8=5.4 and the "buffer" is 1 hours worth of actual 1 minute video files in the recent clips folder.
[...]
The guy at teslatap doesn't seem terribly up on computer tech (see also his suggesting you "need" a drive that reads/writes over 20x faster than the system is capable of supplying data) and he also needs to update his page since the car using 3 cameras now.

What about when/if Tesla enables all 8 cameras (plus the interior one)? 16GB/hour is gonna go throught that USB drive quickly..

That's not taking into account the maybe higher resolution we'll get at some point as suggested by Elon:

Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[Knightshade]

What about when/if Tesla enables all 8 cameras (plus the interior one)? 16GB/hour is gonna go throught that USB drive quickly..

Sure but I've never seen any suggestion they have any plans to do that.

(nor would it even make much sense to turn ALL of them on at all for sentry mode- why you do you need multiple front video feeds for example?)

That's not taking into account the maybe higher resolution we'll get at some point as suggested by Elon:

Software can't magically change the specs of the physical camera hardware. They're 720p cameras.

Encoding could improve quality of the 720p image but that's not likely to impact file size a ton since they're ultimately limited by the resolution of the sensors (cameras).


One note of worth here- HW3 cars use HEVC 265 encoding- which actually can produce SMALLER video files of comparable quality (or higher quality files without increasing file size) compared to the codec used by the older hardware.

 

[Tjex]

Rear camera would be ideal, I'd rather have that one, instead of the side views

 

[Eno Deb]

had to reread, so record continuously read/writing into the 1-HOUR CIRCULAR BUFFER 1.8 GB.

While Data stored in circular buffer can be accessed quickly, but not so sure when saving/writing/processing them into files. I mean you’d have to extract data from the circular buffer?

A circular buffer is just an abstract concept. It doesn't say anything about where it's stored. The video is pretty much immediately written to the USB drive (with just some OS level file buffering for a few seconds). You can easily test it yourself by pulling the flash drive while the dashcam is running and looking at the RecentClips folder.

BTW, it's actually not really a cicular buffer since it's not just overwriting the oldest files, but it actually deletes all files in the RecentClips folder that are older than an hour. If you hop in the car in the morning, activate the dashcam, and pull the drive after 5 minutes, all you'll find is 5 minutes worth of video (because the old files from the previous day have been purged).

The guy @TeslaTap.com said copy. Two people here said move.

Again something you can easily test yourself by tapping the save button and checking whether you now have two copies of the same video files on the USB drive.

 

[n00bie]

@Knightshade
Make perfect sense. From something like temp -> save. Hat off to you. Very informative. Are you in tech field?

I use the word, ONLY, dashcam alone, according to tesla dashcam in my previous posts.

 

[Knightshade]

@Knightshade
Make perfect sense. From something like temp -> save. Hat off to you. Very informative. Are you in tech field?

I am yes...

I use the word, ONLY, dashcam alone, according to tesla dashcam in my previous posts.

Well, if one only uses dashcam, and never uses sentry, their storage needs would be even lower...since typically they'd only be recording the 3 cameras for maybe 1-2 hours a day instead of more like 9-10 hours for folks who leave Sentry on at work all day.

In that case you're only using maybe 5.4 to 10.8 gigs per day... so a 128GB key you'd need to drive (very roughly) 10-20 days to use ONE write cycle up... and only using up 18-36 cycles per year... with a 1000 cycle average lifespan you'd need roughly 28 to 55 years before the drive would fail due to too many writes- so even a smaller cheap 64GB key would be good for over a decade or two.

(obviously adjust as needed if you drive more or less than 1-2 hours a day)

 

[n00bie]

@Eno Deb
as I suspected, software engineer?

 

[Nuclear Fusion]

Are there any things that could be done better with this hub?
Anything that could be added?
More USB-C ports?
All in one charger & USB hub?

 

[sduck]

Yea, sure. But what exactly are you asking about? The market has shown that if one company comes up with something that's moderately successful, another company will come along and one up it, often at a lower price point.

 

[Nuclear Fusion]

Yea, sure. But what exactly are you asking about? The market has shown that if one company comes up with something that's moderately successful, another company will come along and one up it, often at a lower price point.

Maybe we should pass the information on so it can be improved on for cheaper...???

 

[sduck]

I don't understand what you're saying. Pass what information on, and to who?

 

[dragonxt]

Sure but I've never seen any suggestion they have any plans to do that.

(nor would it even make much sense to turn ALL of them on at all for sentry mode- why you do you need multiple front video feeds for example?)





Software can't magically change the specs of the physical camera hardware. They're 720p cameras.

Encoding could improve quality of the 720p image but that's not likely to impact file size a ton since they're ultimately limited by the resolution of the sensors (cameras).


One note of worth here- HW3 cars use HEVC 265 encoding- which actually can produce SMALLER video files of comparable quality (or higher quality files without increasing file size) compared to the codec used by the older hardware.

They're not running the cameras at full resolution for Autopilot. They probably have it running at that same lower res for a dashcam.
It probably is possible for Tesla to increase the resolution on the cameras. Though it won't be anywhere near as good as the resolution on the rear camera.

Edit: At least on S and X. For whatever reason Model 3 rear camera is not nearly as nice.

 

[Knightshade]

They're not running the cameras at full resolution for Autopilot. They probably have it running at that same lower res for a dashcam.
It probably is possible for Tesla to increase the resolution on the cameras. Though it won't be anywhere near as good as the resolution on the rear camera.

Edit: At least on S and X. For whatever reason Model 3 rear camera is not nearly as nice.

Resolution on the dashcam clips is 720p

Which is the max those cameras on the car can do.

 

[dragonxt]

Resolution on the dashcam clips is 720p

Which is the max those cameras on the car can do.

It's possible the dimensions of the clip are set to 1280x720 manually, who knows. Then it would read as 720p. We'll have to see if anything comes up after Elon's tweet.