Sentry Mode used 18 miles of battery overnight.

[timk225]

I just started messing around with Sentry Mode the other day, and I quickly noticed that after 2 days of use, it'd average about an 18 mile loss from parking the car in the evening to looking at it the next morning. Seems like quite a lot!

The way I park my car, it is backed into its spot, perpendicular (90 degrees) to the street, and about 15 feet from the windshield cameras to cars driving by on the street. Could it be cars driving by during the night that keep waking it up and using more power?

And does Sentry Mode disable itself each day when you get in the car to drive, and you have to turn it back on each time you park the car when you want it on?

 

[dusdev]

I park underground in a parking garage during the day and there is a reasonable amount of car and people traffic. After a few days of Sentry enabled the USB key (32 GB) filled up. I didn't really pay attention to the power draw. I hope that a firmware update will address deleting the old footage. I put in a 128 GB so that should keep me going for a while.

Sentry does disable itself. It's annoying. I want a feature where it would disable for certain known locations (like home) and enable everywhere else - unless explicitly disabled to save power.

 

[whatthe2]

I just started messing around with Sentry Mode the other day, and I quickly noticed that after 2 days of use, it'd average about an 18 mile loss from parking the car in the evening to looking at it the next morning. Seems like quite a lot!

The way I park my car, it is backed into its spot, perpendicular (90 degrees) to the street, and about 15 feet from the windshield cameras to cars driving by on the street. Could it be cars driving by during the night that keep waking it up and using more power?

And does Sentry Mode disable itself each day when you get in the car to drive, and you have to turn it back on each time you park the car when you want it on?

Yes to both of your questions.

 

[Matt L]

If you think it’s a lot, don’t use it...again, complaints about optional things that you didn’t pay for.

Why are people complaining about this? Makes zero sense

 

[whatthe2]

I park underground in a parking garage during the day and there is a reasonable amount of car and people traffic. After a few days of Sentry enabled the USB key (32 GB) filled up. I didn't really pay attention to the power draw. I hope that a firmware update will address deleting the old footage. I put in a 128 GB so that should keep me going for a while.

Sentry does disable itself. It's annoying. I want a feature where it would disable for certain known locations (like home) and enable everywhere else - unless explicitly disabled to save power.

More options coming: Sentry Mode options will be:

 

[Twiglett]

You can automate some sentry features in Teslafi as well

 

[KL670]

It’s annoying to see comments like “don’t use it if you’re going to complain”. People are making observations of these scenarios. For one, they don’t know if it’s normal or it only happens to their car. For another, isn’t that the reason why we have a community like this? To have a shared platform to discuss things we notice about our cars? By the way, people know they don’t need to use it if they don’t want to.

 

[Robotpedlr]

I put in a 128 GB so that should keep me going for a while.

I thought the dash cam (and Sentry) was limited to a 32gb USB or 32gb segmented on a larger USB? Does the 128gb work to allow full use of the drive now?

 

[Runebane]

If you think it’s a lot, don’t use it...again, complaints about optional things that you didn’t pay for.

Why are people complaining about this? Makes zero sense

Complaining for the sake of complaining, I would agree. But this is not the case. The driver thought it was a lot of battery drain and wants to know if it's normal or because of how he parked.

Also, Tesla needs customersto complain constructively so they can improve the product. If that was normal no matter how you parked and no one complained, Tesla might think it was okey dokey just the way it is and not try to minimize the impact to the battery going forward.

 

[BluestarE3]

I just started messing around with Sentry Mode the other day, and I quickly noticed that after 2 days of use, it'd average about an 18 mile loss from parking the car in the evening to looking at it the next morning. Seems like quite a lot!

The way I park my car, it is backed into its spot, perpendicular (90 degrees) to the street, and about 15 feet from the windshield cameras to cars driving by on the street. Could it be cars driving by during the night that keep waking it up and using more power?

And does Sentry Mode disable itself each day when you get in the car to drive, and you have to turn it back on each time you park the car when you want it on?

You may want to park nose-in to reduce the likelihood of passing traffic getting picked up by the front camera and triggering Alert state and waking up the car to record the incident.

 

[SSonnentag]

If overnight is 12 hours, then that equates to a power drain of roughly 375 W continuously. I'd hazard a guess that most of that power is going to camera heaters.

 

[bedoig]

If overnight is 12 hours, then that equates to a power drain of roughly 375 W continuously. I'd hazard a guess that most of that power is going to camera heaters.

I keep seeing people talk about camera heaters, but is this really a confirmed thing? A constantly running camera stays pretty warm by itself.

 

[GeoX750]

It’s annoying to see comments like “don’t use it if you’re going to complain”. People are making observations of these scenarios. For one, they don’t know if it’s normal or it only happens to their car. For another, isn’t that the reason why we have a community like this? To have a shared platform to discuss things we notice about our cars? By the way, people know they don’t need to use it if they don’t want to.

Agreed, those posts are not helpful.

I don't know why people bother posting something like that at all ?

 

[Knightshade]

I thought the dash cam (and Sentry) was limited to a 32gb USB or 32gb segmented on a larger USB? Does the 128gb work to allow full use of the drive now?

Larger sizes always worked.

The limitation was the built-in formatting tool in Windows won't format FAT32 larger than 32GB. Plenty of 3rd party tools would always do so though.

 

[SSonnentag]

I keep seeing people talk about camera heaters, but is this really a confirmed thing? A constantly running camera stays pretty warm by itself.

You could very well be right. Just because the snow and ice is all melted around the cameras is no proof there are any intentional heaters. A quick Google search for CCTV cameras shows a typical power draw of 40-60W. With 8 cameras fired up, that could be 320-480W of power without any actual heaters.

I suspect actual power draw per camera is more on the order of 10-15W, but there's the computer processing all the video to account for too.

 

[Robotpedlr]

Larger sizes always worked.

The limitation was the built-in formatting tool in Windows won't format FAT32 larger than 32GB. Plenty of 3rd party tools would always do so though.

Thanks- didnt know that

 

[Twiglett]

I'm pretty sure that the battery draw is changing based on the number of times sentry mode is triggered.
It seems that the car wakes up more if it detects movement then wakes up even more if its fully triggered.
So if its sat is a quiet location then the battery draw is pretty low.
I parked in a busy spot and saw larger battery drains as well as running my USB out of space

 

[whatthe2]

I'm pretty sure that the battery draw is changing based on the number of times sentry mode is triggered.
It seems that the car wakes up more if it detects movement then wakes up even more if its fully triggered.
So if its sat is a quiet location then the battery draw is pretty low.
I parked in a busy spot and saw larger battery drains as well as running my USB out of space

Yep, I've had my car parked at the airport since Sunday morning and have Sentry Mode on. I also have a 2CH BlackVue running and I'm losing about 1MPH per hour.

 

[VQTRVA]

If you think it’s a lot, don’t use it...again, complaints about optional things that you didn’t pay for.

Why are people complaining about this? Makes zero sense

Are you new to tech or something?
The poster was just posing an unexpected performance parameter he was trying to get feedback on.

This type of confirmation is normal esp. with new technologies.

 

[Need]

I'm pretty sure that the battery draw is changing based on the number of times sentry mode is triggered.
It seems that the car wakes up more if it detects movement then wakes up even more if its fully triggered.
So if its sat is a quiet location then the battery draw is pretty low.
I parked in a busy spot and saw larger battery drains as well as running my USB out of space

Not really. Sentry Mode recording all the time even without anything triggering it. It saved the clips in the 60 min (180 files) folder of RecentClip just like DashCam does. The older clips get deleted in that folder so it is always 60 min. Now when something triggered the "HAL 2000", it will move 30 to 33 of those files (Triggered Minute + Previous 9 Minutes + a partial minute after the trigger) to a timestamped folder under SavedClip folder. It always use about 1 mile per hour when Sentry Mode is on. When it is on, the car does not sleep. You can tell because if you try to connect it with the app, it comes up immediately (or really fast).

To avoid running out of space on USB drive, you need to know how to park. Do not ever face a direction with heavy foot traffic. Cars traffic is fine.. it only trigger on human traffic. Best place to park is with front facing another car. Drivers and passengers parked next to you on the side entering/existing will trigger it. I once parked at a doctor office, and the driver of the car next to me go in and out of his car like 10 times in one hour. I came back and had to go thru like 10 folders full of clips of him... I almost wanted to wait for him to come again and ask him why are you getting in and out of your car so many freaking times????