Problems getting Tesla Dash Cam to work

[bonsaipeter]

I have a 2016 S purchased on Dec 31, 2016 and have never been able to get the dash cam working. With AP 1.5 I was told the dash cam would work with a properly formatted USB. Tesla Service told me to increase storage size several times with no effect. Now they are telling me that the car needs AP 2.0 for the dash cam to work. Does anyone know if this is true? Tesla has been no help. If I really need AP 2.0 what is the best solution for an aftermarket cam?

 

[jjrandorin]

I have a 2016 S purchased on Dec 31, 2016 and have never been able to get the dash cam working. With AP 1.5 I was told the dash cam would work with a properly formatted USB. Tesla Service told me to increase storage size several times with no effect. Now they are telling me that the car needs AP 2.0 for the dash cam to work. Does anyone know if this is true? Tesla has been no help. If I really need AP 2.0 what is the best solution for an aftermarket cam?

(moderator note: you originally posted this in a zombie thread, in the model 3 section... when you describe a model s vehicle. "Ap 1.5" is not relevant to any model 3, so removed this post from the thread you zombie rezzed, and moved it to the model S section where there may be people more familiar with your specific issue)

 

[Art VandeIay]

Tesla has been no help.

Hi @bonsaipeter, I'm sorry Tesla has been such a terrible source of information regarding your doubts about the DashCam feature.

Unfortunately, the DashCam and Sentry (that actually records video to a USB drive) features are dependent on the Autopilot computer fitted to your Model S.

Neither the Autopilot 1 (which has one front facing camera) nor Autopilot 2.0 (8 cameras) vehicles can record any video streams from its cameras to a USB drive. Autopilot 2.0 vehicles with the FSD computer upgrade can, but that's a whole different story. Model S and Model X with Autopilot 2.5 onwards are the only ones capable of DashCam and Sentry. These vehicles were built starting on August 2017.

It's important to note that several owners of Model S and Model X with Autopilot 2.5 hardware have mentioned that their Sentry and DashCam features are almost unusable when their vehicles are equiped with MCU1 (the big 17 inch touchscreen). They have both features, but they are extremely buggy and slow. Usually making the recorded videos unusable, as they are corrupted or with lots of stutter.

Your only option (seeing your car doesn't have the 8 cameras needed for DashCam and Sentry), is to purchase a third party DashCam, such as a BlackVue or if you're into a more OEM look, an IRO.

*Just a quick clarification, there is no Autopilot version 1.5. There has only been 4 iterations of Autopilot hardware up to this post. 1, 2.0, 2.5 and FSD (3.0, 3.1 and 3.2). From what I can read from your post, your Model S has hardware 1 (which only has one front facing camera and was developed by MobileEye for Tesla). The purchase date is not really important when talking about Tesla hardware and features, it's actually all about the build date, which you can find on the sticker located on the driver side door.