Sentry mode

[Wol747]

As a new owner I am trying to get to grips with many things!

Sentry mode: The manual says the dashcam only works with USBs formatted to FAT32 - which limits them to 32Gb or so. Yet people regularly advise using SSDs with hundreds of Gb - these cannot be formatted by Windows to FAT32.
I have tried three different third party programs formatting to FAT32 on a 64 Gb USB - none are recognised by my car! In many different experiments I can use one of these, with a TeslaCam folder in the root - the car will activate Sentrycam with the HAL eye and message onscreen - yet there's no recording.
Anyone made it work?

 

[jgdc]

As a new owner I am trying to get to grips with many things!

Sentry mode: The manual says the dashcam only works with USBs formatted to FAT32 - which limits them to 32Gb or so. Yet people regularly advise using SSDs with hundreds of Gb - these cannot be formatted by Windows to FAT32.
I have tried three different third party programs formatting to FAT32 on a 64 Gb USB - none are recognised by my car! In many different experiments I can use one of these, with a TeslaCam folder in the root - the car will activate Sentrycam with the HAL eye and message onscreen - yet there's no recording.
Anyone made it work?

It is certainly possible as my 256GB works fine. But this is going to be the most useless response ever as I can’t tell you how I did it (don’t remember) other than it involved getting into the cmd line in windows. Someone else here will have the answer though. I would have learned it from here.

 

[Wol747]

Not at all useless! I have had many replies from other sites, but nothing seems to work.
Someone did say that FAT32 has been OK for some time in Teslas, but that's not what I found.
I tried using the Windows CMD functions but that aborted saying there was zero space available on my 64Gb USB - that I had just formatted to NTFS!
Why Tesla has restricted the USBs to 32Gb except by fiddling is anyone's guess - there seem to be a lot of software issues with their cars despite the meme that Tesla is a software company which - on the side - makes cars!

 

[Akikiki]

Wol747, I recommend you review techniques here.
Tesla Dashcam Advice, Recommendations and more! – TeslaTap's Dashcam Guide

 

[Wol747]

Wol747, I recommend you review techniques here.
Tesla Dashcam Advice, Recommendations and more! – TeslaTap's Dashcam Guide

Thanks for that. I've used GUIFormat as well as several other 3rd party formatters but none work in the car, even though they check out OK on my PC and the TeslaCam folder is set! I will try the other one but don't have much hope.

 

[Wol747]

Nope - the other program doesn't work either - error MBR write protedted! Yet I can copy files on and off it....

 

[Akikiki]

Try using Disk Manager under Windows 10 Admin tools to delete the partition on that drive. Then try reformatting fat32 again. I can't remember, but you might need to recreate an unformatted partition first. Try both ways. and FDISK /S might repair the bad MBR. I can't remember been too long. Google it.

 

[Wol747]

It's all very odd: I formatted a 32Gb USB - which I had used before in the TeslaCam app OK - formatted THAT to FAT32 and tried it again. I triggered two events, pulled it and put it into my PC: all the files were there as expected. But they would not play - file unsupported! Both in Windows and the sentrycam website.

 

[Akikiki]

Sounds like you corrupted the files when you pulled the drive out. You need to press and hold the icon for about 6 seconds or so. Then you need to wait about the same length or longer before you pull it.

 

[paulp]

Have you tried a different USB? I had issues formatting one of mine, and tried a new one of a different brand and it worked.

 

[JayTee]

It cant be done with windows, the limit is 32GB for FAT32. As you said, you need a 3rd party program. I have a 128GB USB formatted this way and it works well.

 

[Flatbat]

I seem to recall I used EaseUS Partition Master to format my 1TB SSD. I am using Windows 10.

 

[Matt_NZ]

I've done it myself with Rufus just make sure in the "Boot Selection" drop down to change it to "non bootable".

This probably doesn't apply for you, but if anyone has a Linux machine you can also use EXT4 on your USB Drive and the car will recognise it.

 

[AndyEV]

Like you, just a new owner.

I have a 128 GB microSD card. I used MiniTool Partition Wizard Free 11.6,

www.partitionwizard.com

Works fine for me.

 

[MNoICE618]

After the recent update my fat32 512gssd started playing up.

As the system is Linux I tried formatting in ext4- it’s been working perfectly ever since

 

[Wol747]

I take onboard all the above. There's nothing in the manual regarding the screen icons of the USB, though. I have always on PCs had to unmount before removing, but I have no idea whether to do this - or even how to! There's a little boxlike icon which has a downward facing arrow and what I suppose is the camera/sentry icon alongside.
I managed to get the 64Gb USB formatted to a single FAT32 using Linux and put some music AND the TeslaCam folders on it, but only the TeslaCam comes up on the screen - is this normal? Someone mentioned holding the icon down to remove, but there's no confirmation of anything when I do that.

 

[MNoICE618]

After the recent update my fat32 512gssd started playing up.

As the system is Linux I tried formatting in ext4- it’s been working perfectly ever since

I just installed 2020.12.5, and they have deprecated the Ext4 support , pity, it worked more reliably than FAT*

 

[AndyEV]

I take onboard all the above. There's nothing in the manual regarding the screen icons of the USB, though. I have always on PCs had to unmount before removing, but I have no idea whether to do this - or even how to! There's a little boxlike icon which has a downward facing arrow and what I suppose is the camera/sentry icon alongside.
I managed to get the 64Gb USB formatted to a single FAT32 using Linux and put some music AND the TeslaCam folders on it, but only the TeslaCam comes up on the screen - is this normal? Someone mentioned holding the icon down to remove, but there's no confirmation of anything when I do that.

Hold down the camera button until there is a little flash. This will stop the camera, and you can remove the USB safely. Pressing the camera once I think records the last 10 mins as a saved file.

I’ve not tried the music partitioning, I am just using my phone.

 

[T3SL4A]

I’ve read that teslaCam should be on its unique USB.

 

[Wol747]

Useful information above!

My comment above I think still stands: it's bad enough when a company selling underpants has badly coded and documented websites, but Tesla always seems to talk as if it's primarily a technology company - the way it changes things in the car - YOUR car, BTW - with very little documentation is unforgivable. The various quirks and potential pitfalls in the FSD system merit at the very least an online simulator!