Sentry Confusion - Random Triggers

[LEE3]

I returned from a weeks holiday to find the car stating the 128gb memory card was full.

On checking the footage there are literally hundreds of sentry clips of absolutely nothing. No people present no passing cars etc. No obvious triggers whatsoever.

Is anyone else finding this?

In this instance the car was parked at the back of three other cars on the drive effectively boxing it in for security purposes so even if passing cars on the road was triggering sentry I would have thought having another car in front would prevent the unnecessary alerts.

Could a hedge moving in the wind create alerts? It will be annoying to have the card full every four weeks for no real reason.

 

[GM99]

I’ve only just got my USB working for Sentry mode but looks like I’m going to have a similar issue. Had a few false / no alarms in the first 30 mins!

 

[m3gt2]

Can you set the car to just record as a dashcam when driving but no Sentry when parked up?

 

[DaveW]

It also seems to record a tonne of video for each trigger, mostly of nothing.

Was quite happy I’d got my Sentry to Google Drive upload working (Pi Zero) but it often cant get everything uploaded in time, even when there’s only been a small amount of triggers.

Now ordered a Pi UPS to go with it! Hopefully it’ll be refined a bit in v10, great idea, but implementation has a way to go.

 

[GM99]

Hi @DaveW,

Have you got any info on how to manage the upload to Google Drive.
Was thinking that there must be a better way than having to remove the USB every time you wanted to view footage!

 

[Mark_T]

Can you set the car to just record as a dashcam when driving but no Sentry when parked up?

Yes, sentry mode is separate.

 

[DaveW]

Hi @DaveW,

Have you got any info on how to manage the upload to Google Drive.
Was thinking that there must be a better way than having to remove the USB every time you wanted to view footage!

I wrote an article on it as there seemed to be a few steps missing to get it working for Google Drive: How to use a Pi Zero W to record and auto upload Tesla Cam and Sentry Mode videos to Google Drive! - Witchalls.com

Hope that helps.

 

[AlternateFlux]

Yep. Phantom triggers, random recordings and incidents that should have been captured but haven't been.

Sentry mode is very much beta in my experience.

 

[Yev000]

I wrote an article on it as there seemed to be a few steps missing to get it working for Google Drive: How to use a Pi Zero W to record and auto upload Tesla Cam and Sentry Mode videos to Google Drive! - Witchalls.com

Hope that helps.

This is cool, do you know if I could use an external (USB) SSD drive with this method?

 

[DaveW]

Not sure @Yev000 - Using the guide I linked to in that entry you can upload to a NAS drive with it

 

[Jays200]

Although Sentry Mode is enabled on my HW2 2017 MX, I've never ever had a text alert or returned to the car to find alerts on the screen, even after activating it on purpose.

What's the point if all it does is display the HAL eye on the MCU?

 

[Mark_T]

Although Sentry Mode is enabled on my HW2 2017 MX, I've never ever had a text alert or returned to the car to find alerts on the screen, even after activating it on purpose.

What's the point if all it does is display the HAL eye on the MCU?

For HW2 that pretty much is the only point...

People complained that if it didn't appear to be recording then thieves would assume it was safe to break in, so Tesla added the fake recording mode to keep people happy.

 

[davidmc]

I wrote an article on it as there seemed to be a few steps missing to get it working for Google Drive: How to use a Pi Zero W to record and auto upload Tesla Cam and Sentry Mode videos to Google Drive! - Witchalls.com

Hope that helps.

Do you think a Sim Card adaptor for the Pi would work ? This way it could upload footage without wifi to google drive and using a Three network sim with unlimited data? - Could be an alternative way to view footage and be notified on your phone when new data gets saved to your google drive?

One like this?

https://sixfab.com/product/raspberry-pi-4g-lte-shield-kit/

 

[DaveW]

Maybe @davidmc but you'd need to get it to talk via that, I guess another option would be a mobile hotspot.

My UPS solution arrived today, despite looking like an IED it'll hopefully do the job, I'll test it when I get home today

 

[davidmc]

Maybe @davidmc but you'd need to get it to talk via that, I guess another option would be a mobile hotspot.

My UPS solution arrived today, despite looking like an IED it'll hopefully do the job, I'll test it when I get home today

Tell us how it goes

I'm just waiting on the R-Pi's to be back in stock!

 

[davidmc]

It seems that if its raining you will get a lot of Sentry Triggers!

I had 45 Triggers this morning at around 3am when it rained! - painful to watch all!

 

[LEE3]

I wish you could adjust the alerts to only generate recordings if the alarm is actually triggered.

 

[Grymbok]

You may have realised this already but - in my experience whenever Sentry triggers it creates 10 one minute files, the same as Dashcam. Unless the actual trigger was something very serious, the first nine files will always have nothing interesting in them, and can just be skipped. The 10th one is the actual trigger event. Which in my experience so far is usually either someone walking by, or the next bay being used if it's in a car park.