MASTER THREAD: Rear view camera image goes black [2019-2020]

[timk225]

Yeah, I'm on 24.4, and sometimes my backup camera turns on right away, sometimes after few seconds, and sometimes not at all. How am I supposed to back the car up, make the effort to turn my head and look like I always had to do in my 1971 Plymouth Valiant? What century are we living in?

 

[SlimJim]

I have not had black screen for so long I cannot remember when the last time was.
But the automatic wiper finally woke up today on a sunny afternoon.

 

[TheWhiteEGG]

if it doesnt work automatically, can you try pressing it manually?

 

[Msjulie]

if it doesnt work automatically, can you try pressing it manually?

The backup camera "app" is up, well it's window is anyway. It's like the specific bit of software or some driver hasn't woken up yet so you get a nice black square until it is like Oh, you asked for a backup camera view? ...

 

[CCIE]

28.2 here and still see intermittent black screen in reverse.

 

[JBT66]

On 24.4 and mine has improved a lot knock on wood.

 

[jackhodges]

28.2 here also. Still having intermittent issues with the backup camera.

 

[Zirak]

Still happens on 28.3.1 as well..

 

[stevevets]

28.2 reduced the frequency of the issue a lot for me, but it still happens occasionally.

 

[WilliamG]

I can say in the 3.5 months of ownership that this only happens if the car is asleep, I jump in and reverse immediately. Then I’ll see a black screen with white lines for maybe 2-3 seconds. This has happened all of twice since getting the car.

Are we talking about something different here?

 

[SJC3]

I can say in the 3.5 months of ownership that this only happens if the car is asleep, I jump in and reverse immediately. Then I’ll see a black screen with white lines for maybe 2-3 seconds. This has happened all of twice since getting the car.

Are we talking about something different here?

I’ve never seen a black screen (camera area only) with the white lines. Always just the black screen for me when it’s not working. Also, mine will happen during a normal drive, like when coming home and backing into the garage or a supercharging spot.

 

[WilliamG]

I’ve never seen a black screen (camera area only) with the white lines. Always just the black screen for me when it’s not working. Also, mine will happen during a normal drive, like when coming home and backing into the garage or a supercharging spot.

Yeah never experienced that. Guessing it’s a pre-HW3 issue (HW3 has its own issues, of course).

 

[mmiketa]

I'm still on 2019.15.105 and I've never had this issue. Downside, I am still stuck on this version for some reason.

 

[earthwormjim]

Crappy work around, but I found toggling out of reverse into drive, then back to reverse usually brings the camera up right away.

 

[golfleep]

I've have my model 3 about a month, build date of 9/19. There's a strange issue that I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced. For some reason, my backup camera always blacks out in my garage at work. I've never had any issues with the camera blacking out (yet!) at any other location, but without fail, when I try to backup into my usual parking spot/charger at work, the screen is blacked out. The parking assist lines are there and respond to steering input. The proximity sensors work fine as well. If I put the car in park and then hit reverse, sometimes the camera will turn back on. If I reboot the MCU, the camera will work as well. When I leave work later, the camera works fine. It's just blacked out shortly after arrival, when I shift from park to reverse. This issue has been there since day one on V9, and has persisted through V10. Since the camera works fine every where else and at all other times, it sure seems like a software issue to me. It's also not a deal breaker since I don't need the backup camera per se (it's my usually parking spot), but I still find the issue pretty perplexing, and also pretty interesting since it's so specifically isolated to one location.

 

[BZM3]

not quite as bad at yours, but i definitely have noticed that my backup camera framerate is particularly terrible at my apartment when i am parking. Everywhere else it is normal, but super jittery at my home. Bizarre!

 

[golfleep]

not quite as bad at yours, but i definitely have noticed that my backup camera framerate is particularly terrible at my apartment when i am parking. Everywhere else it is normal, but super jittery at my home. Bizarre!

Agree that's pretty strange for your issues to be tied to a specific location as well. You'd figure that if there was an overall issue with the backup camera or whatever else downstream the camera is attached to, that the issues would not be tied to a particular location. The only factor that I thought might play a part in location based issues is the LTE or GPS signals, both of which do drop off pretty sharply in the parking structure at work, but I'm not sure why the camera would work at a later point then. Also, not sure why the backup camera feed should have any relationship to LTE or GPS signals to begin with.

 

[jimmy-buffett]

3 weeks old / 581 miles
Firmware Version: 2019.32.12.2 58f3b76

I've seen other people post these issues separately off-and-on over the last few months, but several of them hit my car last Friday:

1. My backup camera no longer works, the screen turns black. No amount of shifting / waiting solves it.
2. The GPS location of the car no longer updates, it thinks it's sitting in my driveway. Because of this, the street speed limit / cruise control / AutoPilot are not functioning.
   
3. The day/night auto screen brightness no longer works automatically. I have to manually switch it between day and night, after setting it correctly for a specific driving session I set it back to Auto.

I've tried the soft reboot (brake/buttons) and the hard reboot (power off 3+ mins) process several times, neither one fixed it. However, with a soft reboot the car correctly detects which day/night mode the screen should be in immediately after the reboot.

The two things I did to the car on the Friday that this started happening:

• I inserted a FAT32 formatted 64GB USB 3.0 stick to enable dash cam. I had a USB 2.0 stick before that, the car complained about write speed (even though the actual dash / sentry functionality worked fine) so I upgraded.
• I installed my front/rear license plates from the DMV.

I'm a 20+ year software engineer / IT project manager, so the idea of driving a fast computer with a few quirks isn't a big problem. But at some point these types of problems on a new, expensive car will switch from amusing to embarrassing.

I have a service appointment scheduled for next Tuesday.

Sharing all of this ^^^ in case anyone else is experiencing the same issue.

 

[super20g]

Buckle up... These kind of things happen frequently in my experiences with Tesla. Screen rebooting while driving, purple/green vertical lines through backup cam feed, endless 'minor' annoyances that pop up sporadically are my current pain points. Hope you are closer to a service center than I am. That is what kills me.

 

[jimmy-buffett]

Hope you are closer to a service center than I am. That is what kills me.

I'm 30 miles from the closest one, but there is a much closer one that is supposed to open in November.