Please help. Hit and run, sentry mode enabled but did not record???

[loulouBIGTIME]

So I was charging my car at one of my local public charging stations. I left the car plugged in and went and did my business for a few hours. I got a notification saying the alarms were triggered from sentry mode. When I went saw the notification and went back to my car about 1:30 later I noticed someone had hit my car in the parking lot.

I instantly launched view mode and only say the moment when I myself got back to the car and got in it. Nothing else. I pulled the hard drive, plugged it into my computer and nothing from the actual incident itself. Called Tesla and they have no idea why it didn’t record the incident while sentry mode was on. I’m now trying a data recovery and still nothing. I’m infuriated to say the least. Why promote this feature if it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do?

 

[Marty3SR+]

Early on, I had a similar problem and found that the USB drive that came with the car kept disconnecting every few days. I did some research and found that there were more reliable devices, either external SSD or supposedly, even better, micro SD cards designed for cameras. The problem with the latter is you need a USB card reader to put it in, and finding a good one isn't quite as easy.

But I got one that is more reliable than the USB stick. The reader I'm using, from Amazon, is called "Kingston MobileLite Plus USB 3.2 microSDHC/SDXC UHS-II Card Reader". The card itself is "SanDisk 256GB High Endurance Video microSDXC Card with Adapter for Dash Cam and Home Monitoring systems - C10, U3, V30, 4K UHD, Micro SD Card - SDSQQNR-256G-GN6IA ".

But I also learned to check regularly for the sentry mode icon with the red dot on the display. Every once in a while, it will disappear, possibly when it fills up; it doesn't need to be removed like the USB stick did, just reformatted. I regularly reformat - it only takes a few seconds using the display's reformat function. This erases all the useless sentry mode recordings.

 

[EVRider-FL]

Depending on the age of your car, video from Sentry Mode alarm events is also saved in the car's onboard memory, and you can download that video to a USB. Maybe you'll find it there. See your manual for details.

 

[xtofotx]

I was hit at an intersection last July by a guy who obviously was too drunk to drive, the guy passed a red light and hit me.
I had to stop immediately since the left rear wheel was hit. Moments later I checked the dashcam view to realize that the exact moment of the impact was not recorded (plus I did not think about saving the recording immediately after the incident happened...).

Later on I could run a recovery software and eventually could recover the relevant recordings, the impact had been caught on tape. Hope you will recover them too!

 

[Tom76]

So I was charging my car at one of my local public charging stations. I left the car plugged in and went and did my business for a few hours. I got a notification saying the alarms were triggered from sentry mode. When I went saw the notification and went back to my car about 1:30 later I noticed someone had hit my car in the parking lot.

I instantly launched view mode and only say the moment when I myself got back to the car and got in it. Nothing else. I pulled the hard drive, plugged it into my computer and nothing from the actual incident itself. Called Tesla and they have no idea why it didn’t record the incident while sentry mode was on. I’m now trying a data recovery and still nothing. I’m infuriated to say the least. Why promote this feature if it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do?

Sorry you hear about your Car being hit. I I Have a new M3 and experiencing similar problems. Sounds like it is fairly common. Dash cam/sentry mode works intermittently.

 

[Cal1]

We don't have any sentry mode icons on our 2021 Plaid display. The only thing we see anything even remotely related to sentry mode related is by pulling out the vehicle control section and accessing Safety. Sentry mode is enabled but no red dot icon appears anywhere on our main screen. We are using the usb drive that came with the car. It does seem to be functioning, we just can't initiate or start recordings. We did get the new update allowing us to see thru the cameras via the app but no new icon on our app. Will try deleting and reloading the app.

 

[JamesZoo]

I got hit by the car next to my parking bay. Fortunately the owner of the car left me a message note apologising for the incident.

But the sentry video recorded before and after the incident, but not the moment when the incident occurred. So all that i know was that the incident occurred between a 1-hour window.

How disappointing!

 

[Sporty]

I got hit by the car next to my parking bay. Fortunately the owner of the car left me a message note apologising for the incident.

But the sentry video recorded before and after the incident, but not the moment when the incident occurred. So all that i know was that the incident occurred between a 1-hour window.

How disappointing!

The same thing happened to me but I the person didn’t leave a note. Sentry recorded a car pull in minutes before the hit & run. Alarm triggered, didn’t record the hit, and more video roughly 10 minutes later when something else happens.

 

[bunzai]

I was hit at an intersection last July by a guy who obviously was too drunk to drive, the guy passed a red light and hit me.
I had to stop immediately since the left rear wheel was hit. Moments later I checked the dashcam view to realize that the exact moment of the impact was not recorded (plus I did not think about saving the recording immediately after the incident happened...).

Later on I could run a recovery software and eventually could recover the relevant recordings, the impact had been caught on tape. Hope you will recover them too!

What software did you run? My car was hit and the only recording I can view was 45 minutes before and 3 minutes after the impact. I immediately clicked "Save Footage" after the incident. I need to capture the missing footage.

 

[RJUK]

Sorry to resurrect such an old thread, but just had a similar thing happen to my M3P. Some idiot hit it in a supermarket car park and drove off without leaving any details. I immediately checked sentry mode but there was nothing. Weirdly, there were no clips since December 06th 2022. The memory card was showing 1.6GB still left out of 119GB (it's a 128GB card).

I've now erased all the old sentry clips of nothing happening to the car, but the stick only had clips during 2022, so I assume it has been writing over files older than that? I don't recall ever taking it out to empty it previously.

The impact doesn't seem to have triggered the alarm, either, even though the car was hit right above one of the front parking sensors.

Annoying, that the one time I actually needed it in over 3 years of having the car and the flippin' thing didn't record.

That said, it would probably have only recorded the side of the offending car, but something would have been better than nothing.

How do you check for files recorded on the car itself? Mine was delivered December 2019, so isn't a recent car.

 

[Sporty]

Sorry to resurrect such an old thread, but just had a similar thing happen to my M3P. Some idiot hit it in a supermarket car park and drove off without leaving any details. I immediately checked sentry mode but there was nothing. Weirdly, there were no clips since December 06th 2022. The memory card was showing 1.6GB still left out of 119GB (it's a 128GB card).

I've now erased all the old sentry clips of nothing happening to the car, but the stick only had clips during 2022, so I assume it has been writing over files older than that? I don't recall ever taking it out to empty it previously.

The impact doesn't seem to have triggered the alarm, either, even though the car was hit right above one of the front parking sensors.

Annoying, that the one time I actually needed it in over 3 years of having the car and the flippin' thing didn't record.

That said, it would probably have only recorded the side of the offending car, but something would have been better than nothing.

How do you check for files recorded on the car itself? Mine was delivered December 2019, so isn't a recent car.

Yes. This is frustrating and it’s hard to give tesla a pass on this. Poor software with too low of a bar on what is a pretty important feature. Which I think is advertised and not even as a beta feature. (It should have more test coverage and code that positively confirms it’s working or give the owner a notification).

I format the usb drive once in a while (tires changed, new update applied, etc) and absolutely format it after anytime I’ve used the reboot computer option. I’m pretty sure a reboot while sentry was on corrupted the drive once and once that happens it can silently fail to record.