Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Sentry Cam Thoughts

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
  • I had no idea how many people brush against, almost hit, or hit my car all the time. It's crazy-making to watch afterwards. Yelling "watch what you're doing!" at a recording.
  • Even with ample space around the car, people manage to still brush against it or hit it with bags.
  • It does use a fair bit of data on USB. Each event is about 1.5 GB of data, and I had 14 of them in 2 weeks. Combined with the recent events, it's already a bit under half of my 64 GB drive that came with the car.
  • It should store more time after the event, and less before. Most of the time it's 9 minutes + of nothing, then the event, and then the clip ends. Sometimes it cuts off useful footage afterwards.
  • It should include the B pillar cameras
  • It should store more than an hour of recent footage, or be configurable. If I remember to check something after a drive, I want it to still be there.
  • Why do so few people seem to be aware that they are near a car? Are you not aware of your surroundings? wtf.

To address some of this I'm going to get more aggressive about saving from recent anytime something interesting happens. And just ordered a 256GB drive.
 
  • Funny
Reactions: lUtriaNt
  • I had no idea how many people brush against, almost hit, or hit my car all the time. It's crazy-making to watch afterwards. Yelling "watch what you're doing!" at a recording.
  • Even with ample space around the car, people manage to still brush against it or hit it with bags.
  • It does use a fair bit of data on USB. Each event is about 1.5 GB of data, and I had 14 of them in 2 weeks. Combined with the recent events, it's already a bit under half of my 64 GB drive that came with the car.
  • It should store more time after the event, and less before. Most of the time it's 9 minutes + of nothing, then the event, and then the clip ends. Sometimes it cuts off useful footage afterwards.
  • It should include the B pillar cameras
  • It should store more than an hour of recent footage, or be configurable. If I remember to check something after a drive, I want it to still be there.
  • Why do so few people seem to be aware that they are near a car? Are you not aware of your surroundings? wtf.
To address some of this I'm going to get more aggressive about saving from recent anytime something interesting happens. And just ordered a 256GB drive.
I have the following issues with the Tesla dashcam:
  • A dashcam should be running all the time, this the main issue that I have with the Teslacam.
  • Recording only when you use the horn or in case of impact or motion detected is not sufficient as you might forget to activate the dashcam.
  • When the memory is full, the camera automatically over wright previous recordings, unless marked as saved or event detected.
  • The Teslacam don't have the functionalities of a real product and I would recommend using a dashcam such as the Blackvue DR900.
  • In particular you can adjust the sensibility and areas covered.
  • I noticed that my Teslacam is constantly flashing and is becoming useless when park.
  • Also you can access remotely your dashcam when receiving an alert.
  • Also the video quality of the Teslacam images don't provide enough resolution to read a license plate compare to a dascam vith HD quality.
  • I would recommend using a 128MB GB Ultra SD Memory instead of an USB stick or an SSD drive, which are more reliable for constant recording and provide better overheating protection.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ehacke
  • I had no idea how many people brush against, almost hit, or hit my car all the time. It's crazy-making to watch afterwards. Yelling "watch what you're doing!" at a recording.
  • Even with ample space around the car, people manage to still brush against it or hit it with bags.
  • It does use a fair bit of data on USB. Each event is about 1.5 GB of data, and I had 14 of them in 2 weeks. Combined with the recent events, it's already a bit under half of my 64 GB drive that came with the car.
  • It should store more time after the event, and less before. Most of the time it's 9 minutes + of nothing, then the event, and then the clip ends. Sometimes it cuts off useful footage afterwards.
  • It should include the B pillar cameras
  • It should store more than an hour of recent footage, or be configurable. If I remember to check something after a drive, I want it to still be there.
  • Why do so few people seem to be aware that they are near a car? Are you not aware of your surroundings? wtf.

To address some of this I'm going to get more aggressive about saving from recent anytime something interesting happens. And just ordered a 256GB drive.
Here are some of my thoughts on the Sentry Cam;
1. At home, I noticed that the sentry cam was constantly storing a clip of the inside of the garage - I assume because the garage door is being detected as too close to the vehicle. I know you can disable sentry cam at home, but I would still like to have active sentry cam parked in the driveway or on the street at home. Would be nice to have a "garage" setting to disable when it is parked in close proximity to a feature?
or if there is a recurring event within a short time period, it will stop recording the same thing over and over.
2. At work, I park in a parking garage and it takes clips of all the cars driving past (it's a busy garage as it is used by the adjacent shopping center). I know I can disable the sentry cam at work, but I would still want it to record any potential proximity events for breakin or vandalism. It would be nice to have a proximity setting to tune out the cars driving past, but capture if someone gets too close to the vehicle. (Like the RING cameras that allow you to draw areas on the screen to define a proximity/sensitivity setting); or have an algorithm to identify 'people' versus 'vehicles'
3. would be nice to have a better edit function within the dashcam viewer - to be able to select multiple clips and delete, rather than having to go one by one, or have to remove drive and edit on computer.
4. I had a usb thumbdrive that seemed to fail after only a few weeks of use (drive not recognized), I noticed that it was constantly being written to, which is I guess normal behavior. I have replaced the thumbdrive with a micro USB reader, will see if that lasts any longer.
5. Sentry cam seem to be quite sensitive, picking up movement 20+yards away, pedestrians, other cars driving by... maybe provide a sensitivity setting (near, medium, far, or as mentioned above. I was parked in front of a CVS several rows back from the front door and it captured everyone walking in and out of the store. The car was more than 20yards away from the CVS front door.
6. Clips are variable in terms of the sensitivity of when the clip starts recording, I assume it is always recording and then saves a clip when an event triggers it (based on proximity). Sometimes, the clips are not capturing the beginning of an event - someone approached the car and it only has them recorded as right next to the car opening their door (adjacent parking space). maybe it is dependent on the front, versus the side proximity sensor sensitivity settings? Seems that front-on is very sensitive capturing people quite a way off, while people approaching from the side (such as in an adjacent parking space, the trigger to start recording seems to be lagging behind the person approaching the car.
7. would be nice for the Tesla app to alert you of activity and events related to sentry cam, and be able to view the recorded events and live cameras.
8. would be nice for the app to allow you to view and edit the list of videos remotely.
9. I agree that having more settings to allow the user to configure the video recording duration - time before event and time after event - 30sec to 1m is probably sufficient, but the default 9-10mins seems excessive and wasteful on the storage device. Let the user choose.

Just my 2cents.. hoping that someone, somewhere collates all these ideas and feedback.
A
 
The sentry/teslacam system is an extremely slow work in progress, really only in it's early stage of development. Not a serious tool yet. If you think you might have a need for a reliable, always functioning, full featured dashcam get just about any other third party device. I have similar blackvue dashcam watt's_up linked to above.