Sentry Mode

[MentalNomad]

Is there an authoritative reference anywhere about how Sentry Mode is saving footage?

We know Dashcam records 60 minutes and loops over the old footage, only saving (permanently) 10-minute segments on demand.

Sentry Mode has an entirely different purpose - if you're parked for 8 hours in a busy place, you're not there to make it save the ten minutes where someone damaged your car, and you don't want footage to get wiped out by people have been triggering the cameras for several hours while walking by.

I want to know what we know about how it works - speculating isn't so helpful.

 

[Need]

Is there an authoritative reference anywhere about how Sentry Mode is saving footage?

We know Dashcam records 60 minutes and loops over the old footage, only saving (permanently) 10-minute segments on demand.

Sentry Mode has an entirely different purpose - if you're parked for 8 hours in a busy place, you're not there to make it save the ten minutes where someone damaged your car, and you don't want footage to get wiped out by people have been triggering the cameras for several hours while walking by.

I want to know what we know about how it works - speculating isn't so helpful.

I don't think the footage will get wiped, as it is auto saved under a saved folder. I don't know what happened when your drive is full though. The biggest problem for me is that I don't know if anything is triggered and saved while I park. Right now there is no notification that there is something saved in the USB drive. You have to actually pull the drive out and check it. I am not going to do that, so every time someone get too close to the car, it will save 1GB of files... I will probably pull the drive every week to check for now until I get a bigger stick.

 

[Elmexiken]

Is there an authoritative reference anywhere about how Sentry Mode is saving footage?

We know Dashcam records 60 minutes and loops over the old footage, only saving (permanently) 10-minute segments on demand.

Sentry Mode has an entirely different purpose - if you're parked for 8 hours in a busy place, you're not there to make it save the ten minutes where someone damaged your car, and you don't want footage to get wiped out by people have been triggering the cameras for several hours while walking by.

I want to know what we know about how it works - speculating isn't so helpful.

Had this happen yesterday. It did save hours of random motion around the car. It saved so much footage that my 32GB was full by the time I got off work, 8 hours later.

 

[ProphetM]

Can I get a confirmation from someone with Sentry Mode that they still have the Pole Position easter egg as well? There are reports that it's gone, but not a lot of reports, so I'm not sure if it's been removed for some reason or if it's just a bug in some updates.

 

[follow.johnny]

Can I get a confirmation from someone with Sentry Mode that they still have the Pole Position easter egg as well? There are reports that it's gone, but not a lot of reports, so I'm not sure if it's been removed for some reason or if it's just a bug in some updates.

I have Sentry mode update (v2019.5.4) and can confirm Pole Position has been removed for some reason.

 

[Knightshade]

Perhaps I'm math challenged? If a 10 minute clip takes 1.2 GB of space, logic would seem to dictate that 1.2 X 6 = 7.2 GB, or the space required for 1 hour of recording for the three cameras? We all know that TeslaCam only records for 1 hour and then records over those files during the next hour unless you save the files? 'Twould appear to me that the 64GB drive would be overkill in size to the tune of roughly 8.8 times? Unless you're streaming songs from a different folder at the same time, don't know why you would need a drive that large?

Yes- that's what I said...64GB is more than plenty.

The exception would be if you planned to "save" many hours of video (or expected Sentry mode to automatically do so, which it sounds like 1 person already had happen on a 32GB key)

 

[SMAlset]

Yes- that's what I said...64GB is more than plenty.

The exception would be if you planned to "save" many hours of video (or expected Sentry mode to automatically do so, which it sounds like 1 person already had happen on a 32GB key)

And what happens when Tesla starts adding more cameras to the mix? I don't want to keep buying different size USBs so am thinking of going larger to accommodate the increased buffer of what 8 cameras possible eventually? and room for 10 minutes of saved video for each of those camera. Would be nice to have extra room for additional saved incidents as well, such as an attempted break in and then capturing an accident or crazy driver on the way home.

 

[JPP]

And what happens when Tesla starts adding more cameras to the mix? I don't want to keep buying different size USBs so am thinking of going larger to accommodate the increased buffer of what 8 cameras possible eventually? and room for 10 minutes of saved video for each of those camera. Would be nice to have extra room for additional saved incidents as well, such as an attempted break in and then capturing an accident or crazy driver on the way home.

FWIW when the original TeslaCam was announced, I expected that there would be a need for more and more storage of video data. So I just sprung for this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D7Q41PM/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and formatted it on my computer (yes you can format this properly). It has been working flawlessly in my P3D+ for about 4 months (after the initial firmware correction for the file corruption).

And, no, I'm not privy to any secret information nor am I prescient, but you always should get the maximum amount of memory/storage you can afford, as you will eventually need it and use it.

 

[Knightshade]

And what happens when Tesla starts adding more cameras to the mix? I don't want to keep buying different size USBs so am thinking of going larger to accommodate the increased buffer of what 8 cameras possible eventually? and room for 10 minutes of saved video for each of those camera. Would be nice to have extra room for additional saved incidents as well, such as an attempted break in and then capturing an accident or crazy driver on the way home.

8 cameras (at 1.8GB for 10 minutes of footage on each camera) would be 14.4GB.

So the 64GB key would allow for normal use, plus another 40 minutes of "saved" recordings for all the cameras.

If you need more than that for any single day of "incidents" you might want to reconsider whatever mad max hellscape you're driving the car in or if not then sure buy a bigger key and hope Raiders don't intercept the delivery.


That said- we know the AP2.5 computer can't actually process all 8 cameras at 30 fps, so it's unclear if 2.5 cars will ever offer dashcam using all 8 cameras either (possibly it's fine to record, just not process, the video for AP use).

Plus of course the power drain goes up with more cameras- so it wouldn't shock me if they aren't planning to turn on all 8... maybe existing 3 plus the rear? That'd leave you using ~7.2GB for the active 10 minute buffer for all 4 cameras, and room for 70 more minutes of all cameras "saved".

 

[PoitNarf]

Just replaced the 64GB drive I had in my 3 with a 256GB. USB flash drives are so cheap now it’s a no brainer.

 

[Dogwhistle]

Is there an authoritative reference anywhere about how Sentry Mode is saving footage?

We know Dashcam records 60 minutes and loops over the old footage, only saving (permanently) 10-minute segments on demand.

Sentry Mode has an entirely different purpose - if you're parked for 8 hours in a busy place, you're not there to make it save the ten minutes where someone damaged your car, and you don't want footage to get wiped out by people have been triggering the cameras for several hours while walking by.

I want to know what we know about how it works - speculating isn't so helpful.

Each “alert” event is saved into a separate folder on the drive. It doesn’t appear they self-delete. I parked at the mall for 1.5 hours and had 8 different saved events from people walking by my car.

 

[reheat]

Some observations of Sentry mode:
1. Sentry mode seems too be quite sensitive to trigger. Looking at my car's footage, it can be triggered by just cars driving by or people walking by in the parking lot many feet away from my car. It's kind of like the motion activated security camera I have for my home.
2. Some of the footage have lower half of the screen corrupted while the top half of the screen is fine.
3. The Sentry footage are kept in a saved folder that might need to be manually deleted from time to time.
4. The Sentry mode can be activated and recording without a USB drive in place, I took out my USB drive and was still able to trigger the Sentry mode recording on the car, it'll probably be saved on the car's harddrive and uploaded to the Tesla cloud.

 

[ranova]

Does it overwrite the oldest "saved" files when full or stop working?

Assuming overwrite a 64GB drive is PLENTY more than enough space.

At 30mb per side camera per minute and 60 per on the front (not sure why this would be the case but someone claimed that) you're talking 120mb/min, or 1.2 GB for a 10 minute clip.

Meaning a 64GB drive holds over 500 minutes of footage from all 3 cameras comfortably.

IIRC, does NOT overwrite once full - recommend getting a much larger drive since if you are using sentry mode, it will write 10 minutes on your drive every time it gets activated by motion (which is often) - around 1gb each time

 

[banned-66611]

Had this happen yesterday. It did save hours of random motion around the car. It saved so much footage that my 32GB was full by the time I got off work, 8 hours later.

Jeez, do they test anything before throwing it out for beta testing?

 

[Need]

I realized that when the car is in Sentry Mode, it does not sleep. I guess it makes sense as it is recording continuously. When I open the app now, it connects to the car immediately (with SM active) which is nice.

 

[Leeclanual]

Why not just use the sentry mode in high crime and/or high risk areas like a mall, movie theater, etc?

 

[Knightshade]

IIRC, does NOT overwrite once full - recommend getting a much larger drive since if you are using sentry mode, it will write 10 minutes on your drive every time it gets activated by motion (which is often) - around 1gb each time

Yeah that's...not the ideal behavior.... parking in a busy crowded area could end up filling the key, no matter how big, over the course of just a few days, or even 1 day if they do turn all cameras on in the future- unless you're routinely cleaning out the key yourself (practically daily)

 

[banned-66611]

You would think that the ultrasonic sensors would offer a good way of detecting nearby motion. Don't they have 360 degree coverage?

 

[Need]

I am thinking of getting one of the dual (USB Type A and Type C) OTG flash drive. That way I could plug it in to my phone and watch the videos (and maybe remove them to make space) without having to take the flash drive to a PC. Anyone using one of those for their dashcam or sentry mode?

 

[Knightshade]

You would think that the ultrasonic sensors would offer a good way of detecting nearby motion. Don't they have 360 degree coverage?

Yes, but at very short range....