Sentry Mode

[Need]

I've never had to manually deactivate Sentry Mode after getting back into my car. It has always turned itself off after opening the doors.

Really? I was testing this when I first got it. I went inside the car, open up the security screen and sentry mode was still on after I went back to the car. It only got turned off when I shift my gear to something other than P.

There also could be another explanation. I noticed that if I get back to the car without turning SM off first, it triggers an event when I am near the car. When an event happens, it turns the camera icon grey.... I am think it is waiting for the current minute of recording to finish before moving them and previous 10 min to a folder... so basically there is a one minute window that Sentry Mode would stay on even though the door is opened? When I was testing it, maybe my shifting to gear coincide with the time that files are moved to the folder and SM turned off.

 

[Need]

Yes I've seen some weird video artifacts when reviewing the video from the side cameras. The front camera never seems to be affected though. Hopefully this is better in 2019.5.15.

I saw artifacts too and so did my coworker on the side ones sometime.. but not all the time. The side cameras also seem to have problem as dashcam... especially when there is backlight like the sun... half the screen will have artifacts trying to adjust the lighting or something.

 

[Timmy T.]

I tested this briefly in my garage tonight with various levels of ambient light. Pulling on door handles doesn't do anything (well other than drivers side - key card message appears). I don't think Sentry Mode kicks in or works in dark settings unfortunately

 

[Incredulocious]

Just passing along the report I just submitted about issues with the dashcam/sentry recordings:

I'm writing to report camera recording issues with both the dashcam and sentry mode features on my Model 3 (with 2019.5.15 software). I'm seeing that my parked car is now continually recording video from the front, left and right "repeater" cameras even when sentry mode is not enabled.

When sentry mode is enabled, I'm seeing that my "left repeater" camera files are often corrupted: the entire bottom half of the frame is often green and distorted, the compression is often screwed up so badly that moving objects are left smeared across the frame and sometimes the video file is simply empty (zero file length). The corruption appears to occur mostly with the left camera, though the partial green frame also sometimes happens with the right camera. The front camera seems to work normally, although I would argue that the compression is too high because in rain or snow conditions you can't make out any details. (This last issue is not new with 2019.5.14.)

 

[jat255]

Just passing along the report I just submitted about issues with the dashcam/sentry recordings:

I noticed these same issues when examining the sentry mode footage on my USB yesterday

 

[PoitNarf]

Elon tweeted about new options that will be available for Sentry Mode in some future software version, Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[PRLM3]

Anyone else seeing this in their Model 3? Had sentry on. Got in the car and Hal wouldn't go away. Had to do a reboot to clear the screen, I mean, I like 2001 as much as the next Kubrick fan but...

Yeah I've had it once ... got home, let car lock, got back in - it had resolved ... took the update about 1 month ago, use sentry pretty everywhere I go ...

 

[cbkyro]

Most of us still don’t have it. A wider rollout only started on Friday and so far it’s only been to 3’s in CA.

Just got mine last week. Now waiting for the battery performance update.

 

[smak]

So I get out of a movie on Saturday and see that both my alarm and sentry mode had warnings on my phone.

Both said "2 hours ago". So i plug in the thumb drive to my PC, and i look in the Saved Clips folder, and notice 3 folders within that time frame, all with 30 files (10 mins per each camera).

So that's basically 90 files, 1 minute each. 90 minutes...

And I have no idea which of the 90 files show what happened. So it seems the only way to find it is to go through each file looking for it.

I wish there was a better way to do all this.

 

[Knightshade]

So I get out of a movie on Saturday and see that both my alarm and sentry mode had warnings on my phone.

Both said "2 hours ago". So i plug in the thumb drive to my PC, and i look in the Saved Clips folder, and notice 3 folders within that time frame, all with 30 files (10 mins per each camera).

So that's basically 90 files, 1 minute each. 90 minutes...

And I have no idea which of the 90 files show what happened. So it seems the only way to find it is to go through each file looking for it.

I wish there was a better way to do all this.

There is.

Sentry is always "buffering" the previous 10 minutes, but only SAVES anything if it alerts (at which point it saves that minute, plus whatever is in the previous buffer, to the saved clips)

So the event that causes the alert will generally be somewhere around minute 9 or 10....though you have to check each camera to see which side it triggered on.

That's 6 clips instead of 30 for each folder to look at at least.

Usually it's just someone walking past the car fairly closely.

 

[SMAlset]

Don't forget as you are looking through video files that you can scrub through them too looking for a car or people.

 

[rainforest]

Before I start a new thread, can someone tell me how big a USB stick I should get for sentry mode/dash cam (128gb?), and what kind of USB splitter I should get so that I can charge both of my iPhone in the dock at the same time?

Or at least point me to some previous threads which covered this?

 

[lairdb]

There is.

Sentry is always "buffering" the previous 10 minutes, but only SAVES anything if it alerts (at which point it saves that minute, plus whatever is in the previous buffer, to the saved clips)

So the event that causes the alert will generally be somewhere around minute 9 or 10....though you have to check each camera to see which side it triggered on.

That's 6 clips instead of 30 for each folder to look at at least.

Usually it's just someone walking past the car fairly closely.

Don't forget as you are looking through video files that you can scrub through them too looking for a car or people.

And a series of us have been working on scripts to merge and thumbnail the video files, so you can run a quick merge operation to put them all together before scrubbing through the merged video. See Dashcam video script

 

[Cnasty]

Excited to hopefully have a car soon to try this on. I havent done it on my wife's LR3.

 

[smak]

And a series of us have been working on scripts to merge and thumbnail the video files, so you can run a quick merge operation to put them all together before scrubbing through the merged video. See Dashcam video script

I used this to finally go through the footage in multiple 10 minute clips with all 3 cameras. Made things so much easier.

Thank you for all you guys doing that.

There really should be some sort of log in the app that shows this things. If it said Sentry mode activated at 3:43 pm, that would solve it for everyone, especially the people who will never merge.

 

[aspec818]

i've been hearing people's rear quarter windows getting smashed and the sentry mode alarm didn't go off. there were at least 3 instances locally I heard in the past week. The recording didn't capture anything and/or the file was corrupted. Anyone else noticing this? Tesla needs to revise sentry mode if it isn't working as intended. So far, it seems bit inconsistent.

 

[israndy]

Seems to have issues with the camera on the passenger side, the side they will normally smash your window on. Lots of people reporting it.

-Randy

 

[vickh]

why does it not work with > 20% range? use that much energy?

 

[Knightshade]

why does it not work with > 20% range? use that much energy?

uses about 1 mile per hour of range. They had to pick a cutoff number. They picked 20%.

 

[israndy]

It won't even work with >20% range when it's plugged in. THAT'S a weird decision.

-Randy