Sentry DashCam (TeslaCam) no longer working

[bsd107]

A month ago I installed into my 2020 Model 3 a Samsung USB 2TB SSD, following the instructions on multiple FAQs and websites to partition the drive properly into two drives - one for media, and one for the TeslaCam directory. As required, the TeslaCam directory was formatted in FAT32.

Everything was working fine, with the media drive being properly recognized by the car and allowing playing music from USB, and the TeslaCam directory on the other drive capturing video from the car’s cameras.

About a week or so ago, I started getting error notifications at the top of the screen, with the DashCam icon with a red x in it. Pressing the triangle error icon brings up a dialog error box saying:

“USB drive is not accessible by Dashcam.
Reformat the drive to a supported format”
The error code provided is “UI_a078”

After about a week of this (same error, but the Media drive working fine), I removed the drive from the car and hooked it up to my PC. The TeslaCam FAT32 drive reported some error, and was repaired, and all the video files in the TeslaCam directory seemed fine. I put the drive back into the car but received the same errors as before.

Out of desperation, I put the drive back onto my computer, completely repartitioned the drive into a single FAT32 drive, created the TeslaCam directory, and put it back into the car. Same error resulted - the TeslaCam feature will not work.

Anybody have any ideas what may be happening? Everything was working fine for a month, and then all of a sudden I cannot get TeslaCam to work with the drive, even after wiping and repartitioning. I did receive a car OS update last week, but this had no impact....

 

[Tam]

...I did receive a car OS update last week, but this had no impact....

Hmmmm! It doesn't work after a software update so no impact, it's just coincidental?

 

[bsd107]

Hmmmm! It doesn't work after a software update so no impact, it's just coincidental?

I guess I should have said that the software update did not fix the issue....

 

[GRNN_Coco]

I'm having the same issue. Format my USB drive several times. Still not working.

 

[bsd107]

I've repartitioned and reformatted my Samsung SSD multiple times now, using both RMprep and GUIformat, into FAT32, and neither gets the drive working again with DashCam. I even completely removed my hub and disconnected the phone charging cable, connecting ONLY the SSD to the car, and the car still claims that the drive is in an "unrecognizable format".

Again, this drive was working fine, and then all of a sudden the car decided it was not a valid format anymore, despite the media partition continuing to work fine. I haven't been able to get the drive working with DashCam ever since. I've also reverted back a single partition (removing media) and it still won't work.

I am totally convinced that this is a software bug.

 

[eladts]

I had similar issue when I bought my 1TB Samsung T5. After searching the web, I found a post on Reddit that claimed that for 1TB drives or greater, the drive should use the GPT scheme instead of the default MBR. I reapportioned the drive and it worked fine.

PS: I only use a single partition for TeslaCam.

 

[Phlier]

I had similar issue when I bought my 1TB Samsung T5. After searching the web, I found a post on Reddit that claimed that for 1TB drives or greater, the drive should use the GPT scheme instead of the default MBR. I reapportioned the drive and it worked fine.

PS: I only use a single partition for TeslaCam.

@bsd107 Did you try the quoted advice? If so, did it fix it for you?

 

[bsd107]

I had similar issue when I bought my 1TB Samsung T5. After searching the web, I found a post on Reddit that claimed that for 1TB drives or greater, the drive should use the GPT scheme instead of the default MBR. I reapportioned the drive and it worked fine.

PS: I only use a single partition for TeslaCam.

Thanks. I converted to GPT and created the partitions again, and formatted as FAT32 (I am using one partition for TeslaCam and one for Music). The GPT was the step I was missing as I was trying to get the drive working again.

The drive is now recognized by the car and the DashCam feature now shows as available.

We'll see how long this lasts - to get the drive fully working again I followed the same exact instructions and I had used originally to set up the drive successfully, so I still don't know why it worked fine for a few weeks and then the Model 3 started giving errors on the DashCam feature while the music worked fine all along....

 

[C141medic]

Anyone have an issue where the dashcam/sentry are only recording from the rear camera? Really strange. It was working fine previously. I’m on the latest FW and HW 2.5. I tried saving clips and everything saves. However all camera clips, with the exception of the rear camera which is fine, are only 56 bytes. And of course those 56 byte files do not play. Stumped.

 

[Phlier]

Anyone have an issue where the dashcam/sentry are only recording from the rear camera? Really strange. It was working fine previously. I’m on the latest FW and HW 2.5. I tried saving clips and everything saves. However all camera clips, with the exception of the rear camera which is fine, are only 56 bytes. And of course those 56 byte files do not play. Stumped.

Did you ever get this straightened out?

I haven't been on the forums lately very much, and completely missed your post til today. The 56 byte file size is a telling sign of directory corruption. This is usually solved by pressing and holding on the camera icon until the icon changes. This effectively "unmounts" the drive, making it safe to pull it out without causing directory corruption. Just something to try if you're still having this issue 5 months later.

 

[gaswalla]

seems like now one can just format the drive using the touchscreen vs using a desktop... probably solves the problem?

 

[C141medic]

Did you ever get this straightened out?

I haven't been on the forums lately very much, and completely missed your post til today. The 56 byte file size is a telling sign of directory corruption. This is usually solved by pressing and holding on the camera icon until the icon changes. This effectively "unmounts" the drive, making it safe to pull it out without causing directory corruption. Just something to try if you're still having this issue 5 months later.

It’s been fixed since subsequent fw updates and HW3 but now I’m unable to view the 1 hour loop recordings (not the saved clips) through the screen viewer. I haven’t played around with it for a month as I haven’t been driving my car much (only around 6K for a 2018). Some have mentioned the only way to view these loop recordings are through a computer?

 

[Phlier]

It’s been fixed since subsequent fw updates and HW3 but now I’m unable to view the 1 hour loop recordings (not the saved clips) through the screen viewer. I haven’t played around with it for a month as I haven’t been driving my car much (only around 6K for a 2018). Some have mentioned the only way to view these loop recordings are through a computer?

Up until this last week, I had a Raspberry Pi installed in my car which just took the sentry mode clips and saved clips from the Tesla and moved them to my home computer for me. I just barely switched over to a 1TB SSD drive a few days ago. Haven't ever tried to view the one hour cache of files... have to give that a try and let ya know.

 

[Phlier]

So I just spent some time messing around with the built-in camera player app, and the only selections I see are: 1. Play Sentry Cam recordings 2. Play Saved recordings and 3. Play "recent", which appears to be a portion of the one hour buffer.

 

[C141medic]

So I just spent some time messing around with the built-in camera player app, and the only selections I see are: 1. Play Sentry Cam recordings 2. Play Saved recordings and 3. Play "recent", which appears to be a portion of the one hour buffer.

Interesting. I’ve seen #1 & 2 before in the built in player but never an option for #3. So, it didn’t have the entire 1 hour of recordings?

 

[Phlier]

Interesting. I’ve seen #1 & 2 before in the built in player but never an option for #3. So, it didn’t have the entire 1 hour of recordings?

Nope, it didn't.... it only had the last 30 minutes. I'm not sure if it just happened to be 30 minutes earlier that it had flushed the buffer, or what the deal is. More experimenting is needed.

The microSD card in my Raspberry Pi wore out a few weeks ago, so I bought a 1TB SSD drive, thinking that I would just use the built in viewer. I'm already starting to regret my decision... it was really convenient having the Raspberry Pi automatically send saved and sentry videos to my home computer.

I thought that it was a "rolling" one hour, meaning that had a continuous one hour buffer on the drive at one time, vs. flushing the whole hour and starting over again.

 

[C141medic]

Nope, it didn't.... it only had the last 30 minutes. I'm not sure if it just happened to be 30 minutes earlier that it had flushed the buffer, or what the deal is. More experimenting is needed.

The microSD card in my Raspberry Pi wore out a few weeks ago, so I bought a 1TB SSD drive, thinking that I would just use the built in viewer. I'm already starting to regret my decision... it was really convenient having the Raspberry Pi automatically send saved and sentry videos to my home computer.

I thought that it was a "rolling" one hour, meaning that had a continuous one hour buffer on the drive at one time, vs. flushing the whole hour and starting over again.

Strange it only had the last 30 minutes. Good to know though now at least you can view those clips. I had the Raspberrypi setup too a few months back and then it just stopped working after a FW update so I never bothered to reconfigure it. It was convenient having it upload to my Synology NAS.

 

[Phlier]

Yup, FW updates seemed to cause my Raspberry Pi fits all the time, too. They were always fixed by unplugging the Pi, powering the car down completely, waiting for the car to power back up, then plugging the Pi back in. Not sure why that fixed it, but it worked for the last year.