Sentry mode question

[DanPP]

Hi guys sorry I’ve been asking a few questions but I’m new to Tesla and am just curious about things.

I normally have sentry mode off unless I’m parking up somewhere where people will be near my car and I’ve turned it on and when I get back in my car it comes up saying sentry mode reported but how do I view the clips as I tried to watch a YouTube video but couldn’t get to the bits there were getting to, I don’t have the USB yet (I’ve ordered one), I’m not sure if you need the USB to view them?

Also a completely separate question, I’ve seen a post about someone’s car not being fast and someone said the battery wasn’t warm and to look for dots on te regen bit and am the accelerater bit, is this a real thing as I haven’t seen any dots before , or maybe I’m not looking hard enough?

Any advice is great, thank you

 

[Bright3]

Yes it will show that there was some events however you will need a Fat32 formatted usb device with a folder labeled TeslaCam on it connected to a USB port to actually view the videos.

 

[rpiotro]

Yes, you will need a USB stick. USB 3.0 or 3.1, 128GB or better preferred . That is where the recordings live. If this is a new Tesla it should already have one installed. Look in the glove box. Upper LH corner. You will either see a Tesla branded stick or a slot for one.

If you have one already you can review all recordings by pressing the camera icon on the upper RH corner of your screen

 

[EVRider-FL]

Lots of information about Sentry Mode and the dashcam in the manual, so my advice is to start there. The PDF for the latest Model 3 manual is here: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/model_3_owners_manual_north_america_en.pdf

Not sure what you’re asking about in your second question, so I can’t help with that.

 

[drtimhill]

Wrt to dots these will appear at the left end of the power meter when the battery is cold. The power meter is the thin black/green horizontal line near the speed readout

 

[Knightshade]

To clarify further-

Sentry does not record video

Thus you can have it turned on without a USB device to record video.

The dashcam function records video. And will always record the last hour of video if there's a correctly formatted USB device attached and the car is awake.


Sentry does several things, only 1 is related to video at all (and is not a recording function)

Sentry will keep the car 'awake' (which means DASHCAM will keep recording since it always records as described above if the car is awake and it has a place to record to).

Sentry will go to alert mode if someone approaches the vehicle which may cause the flash of lights, you are being recorded warning on the display, etc. (this does not require anything actually being recorded)

Sentry will blare classical music and alert your phone if it goes to an alarm state (again unrelated to recording)

Lastly- when it goes to an alert sate- it will ALSO move the previous 10 minutes of video from the recent folder (which is constantly overwritten to only have the most recent hour of footage) into a Sentry folder where it does NOT get overwritten unless the drive is almost out of space and then it overwrites the oldest clips).


That final bit is the only part of sentry that requires having the USB stick installed and set up right to work.

 

[Oldrocky]

SCJeff - thanks! That tells me everything I need to know in order to use Sentry Mode
effectively. Great summary - now "all" I have to do is to get a USB stick plugged into
the port in the glove box (if it doesn't already have one). Thanks again ... Jim