Phantom Sentry Mode Events

[2101Guy]

Went on vacation recently for a 5 days. Car in locked garage. Only window in the garage is on the small entry door which is far back passenger side of car. And no one walks by that door. Garage was secured/locked as was the car entire time.

Checked the USB earlier today, and tons of random video clips that totalled 116gb. The few I checked were front camera aimed at my garage wall. Zero activity or movement from anything. Other camera faced my other car parked next to the Tesla. Zero activity in the garage.

Tesla wasnt plugged in during the time away. Battery dropped from about 60% to 35% during this time. (normal, I think). No updates were downloaded/zero activity on the car itself. Garage was not entered by anyone.

Why so many events? In fact, why any events at all?

 

[ucmndd]

No idea what was triggering the car, but:

Why do you have sentry mode on at home in a locked garage? What a fantastic waste of energy.

 

[2101Guy]

No idea what was triggering the car, but:

Why do you have sentry mode on at home in a locked garage? What a fantastic waste of energy.

Thanks. Good point. Based on that post, I'll plan to uninstall my security cameras installed within my locked home as well...

Anyone else have any thoughts as to the answer to the specific question posed, ie, what could potentially trigger so many (non) events? Or is there an issue with how my sentry mode is designed to function?

 

[ucmndd]

Thanks. Good point. Based on that post, I'll plan to uninstall my security cameras installed within my locked home as well...

Lol, you do you, but there's something to be said about using the right tool for the job. If the job calls for a screwdriver, it makes little sense to rent an excavator.

A home security camera installed in your garage doing what it's designed to do makes a lot more sense than letting your $50k+ car burn 300+ watts for days on end, along with associated wear and tear on the battery, MCU that never sleeps, etc.

Anyone else have any thoughts as to the answer to the specific question posed, ie, what could potentially trigger so many (non) events? Or is there an issue with how my sentry mode is designed to function?

I've never experienced a similar issue or heard of others having such a problem, so I think it's a one-off related to your specific conditions in the garage. Could be something as simple as a little spider or bug dancing around in front of one of your cameras. At any rate, I'd expect the sensitivity tuning for what Sentry is actually intended to do is at odds with what you're trying to make it do in your garage.

 

[dannycamps]

Thanks. Good point. Based on that post, I'll plan to uninstall my security cameras installed within my locked home as well...

Anyone else have any thoughts as to the answer to the specific question posed, ie, what could potentially trigger so many (non) events? Or is there an issue with how my sentry mode is designed to function?

Does your garage have windows?

I keep my car parked out in my driveway and I have seen some strange things trigger Sentry on my car especially at night. Sometimes a sudden change in ambient lighting (e.g. a cloud moving in front of the sun or headlights coming down a dark street) will trigger Sentry. Other times, I've seen bugs, dust, and rain trigger it. The optical motion detection used by the camera array vs. heat signature or infrared of real motion detection equipment is just not as accurate and is prone to false positives.

Some mornings I will come out and find no sentry alerts at all and other times, I will have upwards of 60 alerts and reviewing the footage yields nothing meaningful.

I wouldn't be too concerned with it but I would recommend keeping the car plugged in while you are away for a few days.

 

[trm2]

I have sentry turned off at home, yet still get constant videos of my back garage door that has a blind covering the window.

 

[2101Guy]

Yep. When I'm home,

Does your garage have windows?

I keep my car parked out in my driveway and I have seen some strange things trigger Sentry on my car especially at night. Sometimes a sudden change in ambient lighting (e.g. a cloud moving in front of the sun or headlights coming down a dark street) will trigger Sentry. Other times, I've seen bugs, dust, and rain trigger it. The optical motion detection used by the camera array vs. heat signature or infrared of real motion detection equipment is just not as accurate and is prone to false positives.

Some mornings I will come out and find no sentry alerts at all and other times, I will have upwards of 60 alerts and reviewing the footage yields nothing meaningful.

I wouldn't be too concerned with it but I would recommend keeping the car plugged in while you are away for a few days.

Thanks.
Yes, there is one window on the walk in entry door at the back side of the garage. I'll check the times of the videos to see if they coincide with sunlight (vs middle of night). Its a detached garage so not covered by the security cameras within the home. Also, far enough away from the house that even with Google Mesh, insufficient internet coverage for cameras to be installed inside the garage. So for the occassional trip away, I plan to take advantage of sentry mode. Would be my luck to have the one garage break in while I was away, Tesla in garage, and I had the choice to click a button and use sentry, but I didnt.

 

[Watts_Up]

Went on vacation recently for a 5 days. Car in locked garage.
...
Checked the USB earlier today, and tons of random video clips that totaled 116 GB.
...
Zero activity or movement from anything.
...
Why so many events? In fact, why any events at all?

@2101Guy I reported a very similar problem in this forum, see the links below:

#52 2020.24.6.4 !
​

- I also parked my car in my garage and Sentry was reporting tons of activity.
- To be sure that there was no activity in the garage, I activated remotely Sentry to work only from 2 am to 4 am.
- Still the same issue. I though about any possible triggering issue...

#7 Not sleeping...
​

- I have also a dashcam (Blackvue DR900) connected to the cloud, and I was receiving a lot of alerts.
- I kept on the life stream of my dashcam and there was the typical Sentry mode flashing almost every minutes or so.

- To be sure that my dashcam didn't interfered with Sentry, I put my dashcam outside of my car, running on its own battery.
- And Bingo, the car was flashing again like a Christmas tree, about every minute, with both the front headlight and read red lights.

#5 Not sleeping...​

I contacted The Tesla SC and made an appointment. I indicated the exact time the Sentry was flashing using my dashcam log.
The Tesla SC contacted me back, cancelled the appointment, and told me that Sentry might be too sensitive and that there will be a software update.

#2 Secutiry Alarm Turns On With Sentry - False Alarms
​

I don't use Sentry anymore, except when parked outside during the day, to record if someone hit my car when opening a door.
I don't use Sentry at night, because the flashing lights are too noticeable and sometime this upset people passing by.

#8 Gap in recording in Sentry mode
​

When using Sentry for a long time, this has a big effect on the car range, so I used only when really needed.
The only feature that I like with Sentry is that you can activate it remotely, thus this also start my dashcam.
However, if I want to keep my dashcam on, I use a separate battery or the Tesla Camp mode to get the 12 V on.

Incidentally I noticed that when using the new future "auto walk away lock at home" my car never went to sleep.

#61 TeslaMate Super Thread
​

Conclusion:

Sentry sensitivity cannot be adjusted so I don't use it anymore because I had too many false alarms.
I use Sentry only during the day when parked in a parking lot for a very short time.
At night the flashing is annoying and cannot be disabled, so I don't use Sentry anymore...
Sentry can be valuable when driving because of the side camera that my dashcam doesn't have.​

Sentry needs improvements to be used as a real security recording, so I rely in fact on my dashcam because:

- The Dashcam motion and choc detection sensitivities can be adjusted.
- The video image is divided in zones that I select or remove to avoid false positive.
- Every time an event is triggered I receive an alarm on my phone.
- I can check remotely the videos recording or get a life video stream of the surrounding.
​

 

[TicoMcC]

Just asking... Are you sure it's Sentry Mode and not just regular dash cam? Every time I install a software update, the dash cam gets turned on. I also just forget to turn it off sometimes.
Again. Just a thought. Does the IC indicate you have 500 Sentry mode events?

 

[2101Guy]

Just asking... Are you sure it's Sentry Mode and not just regular dash cam? Every time I install a software update, the dash cam gets turned on. I also just forget to turn it off sometimes.
Again. Just a thought. Does the IC indicate you have 500 Sentry mode events?

Not sure I knew that dashcam can activate when the car is "off" (in park, no one inside, door locked)? Either way, I def had something like 1200 events that were indicated as Sentry Mode events in the IC

 

[Watts_Up]

Not sure I knew that dashcam can activate when the car is "off" (in park, no one inside, door locked)?
Either way, I def had something like 1200 events that were indicated as Sentry Mode events in the IC

I just noticed this older thread reporting a similar event:

Sentry mode triggering every minute
​

 

[Thekuai]

I park in my driveway and I have infrared led lights on my security cameras which are in view of the rear tesla camera. There is also led street lighting in the front of the house. I wonder which is the culprit?

 

[drklain]

Sentry mode has pretty basic video analytics (the technology which allows you to generate alerts based on a video signal). Two companies ago, I worked with advanced systems used by the US DOD. We had very advanced alarms which included:

• Someone enters the field of view (or a designated area in the field of view)
• Something leaves the field of view (or a designated area in the FOV)...think a vehicle leaving a parking lot/motor pool.
• Something crosses a line (or crosses a line in a specific direction
• Something is left in the field of view (think someone walks in, leaves a bag, then walks off and the bag remains...could be a person leaving a bomb or whatever)
• Something above a certain size (number of pixels) enters the FOV or any of the above things...this eliminates something like a cat from setting it off)
• Something moving above a certain speed
  
• and others including combinations of the above

In the case of Tesla Sentry mode, it appears to be a basic alerting based on alerting based on a change in what is considered "static image" above a certain number of pixels with movement for some period of time (eliminates it going off if a tree branch sways in the wind). As a result, it has a fair number of false positives for things in the distance or (when parked in a garage) things like shadows or just image shift for things like cans/bottles/stuff on a shelf. I got lots of false alerts in my garage until I turned Sentry off for home location...no one walking in (although it did alert on that) but just appeared to be triggering on all the "stuff" in the garage along the walls...

I wouldn't worry about the false alarms you are getting and that you have an intruder. The question is if you want to turn sentry off for that location given the high false alarm rate, actually look at the video for each alarm to see if something happened, or ignore the alarms (note this is the worst option...ignoring alarms is the same as having no alarms at all).