Sentry Mode - no video at time of alarm - Tesla support suggestion

[jrmnet]

This past weekend we had sentry mode on while parked in the city. Most of the time we were far from the car, but near the end of the trip we were at a place very close to where we were parked.

At that time I got an alert in the mobile app from sentry, and also heard a car alarm going off. I looked around the corner from where we were and could see that it was out car. At that moment I could see someone standing right by the passenger door. At that time they seemed to be spooked by the alarm and lights and shuffled off.

This was the middle of the day in a busy area, so I would have expected some alerts, but wasn't really worried about someone breaking in. Regardless, I left where we were to go check on the car, walked around it, saw nothing wrong, went back to where we were when I received the alert.

At home I reviewed the videos and can see me walking around the car after the alter, but for 10 minutes prior to that, including when the alert went off, there is NO video. There is plenty of other video way before that as well as after that. This is a new 128 GB Samsung USB drive (was formatted correctly) that appears to record video just fine (it's been in use for at least a month). It is plugged in via a hub, so I guess that's a possible culprit.

I called support, they said stop by a service center and the techs can pull the logs. Tech said that he could pull the log, but would need basically the EXACT minute it occurred to pull it on a 3, otherwise we would need to wade through too much log data. Me did say on older S and X cars it was much easier to pull logs for when an alert was sent.

His recommendation was to record exactly when it happens again, and then bring it in for when to review - so if this happens to you, keep this in mind. Any ideas on what could cause this? Any recommendations of what to try other than eliminating the hub and trying another usb drive?

Unfortunately it is cause for a lack of confidence that it didn't go off when it should have the most. Hopefully if its a software issues it gets corrected with an update. Other than this, things have been fantastic with this car.

 

[SMAlset]

So you got an Alarm notification on your phone. When it reached Alarm state the car would flash headlights, honk horn and play loud music inside the vehicle. Which it sounds like it did. I had this happen to me BTW while my car was in a parking garage and we we were dining. I did find the footage however in my SavedClips folder. Is that where you were looking? Or did you only check the RecentClips folder? Since I parked with a wall in front of me, I could see the flashing lights against the wall, obviously no audio recorded. I the watched the footage from that 10-min clip and saw what we believe was a car drive past with windows down and we assume very loud music. It was the only thing that could have triggered. You should have a similar 10-min file in SavedClips.

BTW I always do a screen grab on my phone for stuff like this to keep until I delete the image as the phone will show the time I got the notification. I’m on an iPhone so if on Android not sure what you have.

 

[boaterva]

Doesn’t it give you a notification that stays on the phone like any other notification? I’ve never gotten one for Sentry/Alarm so, it’s unclear to me. If it’s a normal app notification, a swipe down will show all of them and date and time down to the minute. How is this notification different from a charging or software update one?

 

[SMAlset]

Depends, on my phone or watch, would come down to how you handled the notification — discard, dismiss

 

[jrmnet]

I didn’t even think to look at the time stamp for past alerts! It was still there, so now I have the exact time.

Yes, I did check the saved folder, and also checked recent just in case when it happened and there is still a 10 min gap right up to the time of the alert. It’s almost as if the alert itself results in a failed write.

 

[jrmnet]

Okay, I feel like a bit of an ass here here - I may have been looking at modified on date/times instead of the created ones.

I walked up to the car at 1:20 PM and there are plenty of videos before and right up to that time. From looking at it closely I was able to see the reflection of the lights flashing on the car in front of me to narrow it down to the exact moment 1:16 and some seconds, which matches the timestamp on my alert notification.

I still couldn't locate the suspicious person on the clips, my best guess is that he was just in front of the right repeater and it never picked him up. Either that, or I'm just a little bit crazy.

I will say this, reviewing the clips on sentry cam was the only sane way for me to do it.

TeslaCam Video WebApp Player

Thanks for everyone that replied. My view is that we are all the beta users of the current dash cam, and good UI for it will be in place in time for the Model Y release.