-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Sentry Sucks USB Space
- Thread starter astrowunder
- Start date
BluestarE3
Active Member
When Sentry Mode goes into its "Alert state" (HAL screen), it starts recording. This can be triggered by someone or something passing near your car. If you're parked on a busy street or in a busy lot/garage, you'll end up with a lot of three camera recordings, which can eat up storage quickly.
Also, Teslacam now records with three cameras rather than the original front camera only implementation.
To put it into more context, each 1 minute clip is about 30mb.
For the continuous 60 minute recording, you'll have:
60 minutes * 30mb * 3 = ~5400mb (~5.4gb)
For each 10 minute manual save, you'll have:
10 minutes * 30mb * 3 = ~900mb
For the continuous 60 minute recording, you'll have:
60 minutes * 30mb * 3 = ~5400mb (~5.4gb)
For each 10 minute manual save, you'll have:
10 minutes * 30mb * 3 = ~900mb
Apparently sentry mode doesn't ever record over itself like the front camera does?
I figured this out today when some jackhole went flying past me in the right lane, darted in front of me because of slower traffic on the right and proceeded to bounce off the center median barrier, almost flipping his 4 runner at 90+ MPH. I went to push the button to save recording and it was grayed out. When I got home I checked the flash drive and it was full of clips of my car sitting in the garage.
I enabled Sentry Mode the night I installed the update and must have filled the drive up right away and not noticed. I have no idea what was triggering it to record, there was nothing going on. I thought it would only record if it sensed something too, but does not seem that is the case.
I figured this out today when some jackhole went flying past me in the right lane, darted in front of me because of slower traffic on the right and proceeded to bounce off the center median barrier, almost flipping his 4 runner at 90+ MPH. I went to push the button to save recording and it was grayed out. When I got home I checked the flash drive and it was full of clips of my car sitting in the garage.
I enabled Sentry Mode the night I installed the update and must have filled the drive up right away and not noticed. I have no idea what was triggering it to record, there was nothing going on. I thought it would only record if it sensed something too, but does not seem that is the case.
Behavior is odd, I’ve noticed recordings on my usb when I didn’t even have sentry mode on. I was recently in my garage cleaning up and my Tesla spied on me the whole time...maxed out my drive. Felt violated.
I’m having a tough time understanding how sentry mode works.
I’ve turned sentry mode on a few times, and it seems to always record when enabled - not just when someone approaches the car. If sentry is turned on, it’s saving files to the USB drive. I have tons of footage of my car just parked for hours. Is this how its supposed to work?
I thought it would only record when someone came near and alert you to it through your phone. Basically now I have to watch through hours of footage to see if anything happened - and the drive is gonna fill up real fast.
I’ve turned sentry mode on a few times, and it seems to always record when enabled - not just when someone approaches the car. If sentry is turned on, it’s saving files to the USB drive. I have tons of footage of my car just parked for hours. Is this how its supposed to work?
I thought it would only record when someone came near and alert you to it through your phone. Basically now I have to watch through hours of footage to see if anything happened - and the drive is gonna fill up real fast.
I finally cleared out my 256GB flash drive earlier today. Been using Sentry Mode since I updated my Model 3 to 2019.5.4 three weeks ago. I still had around 90GB of free space even though there was 3 weeks worth of recordings on there. Get a 256GB drive and you’ll be ok as long as you remember to clear out the drive every other week. Tesla really needs to change the behavior so it automatically overwrites the oldest files...
Although consider you are parked at an airport on a business trip and gone for a period of time. You wouldn't necessarily want Sentry Mode SavedClips to be written over. Having the TeslaCam's 1-hour buffered files get written over is fine for most driving scenarios. A 128GB or 256GB flashdrive will serve most people who don't want to keep checking their drive often. It's really not a bad idea to check the drive periodically anyway to make sure you don't have corruption issues.
I think it needs a sensitivity setting. The first time I tried it my car was in the garage. I have a hub in my garage so the car has good wifi and the blinking light on the hub caused sentry to record constantly till the card was full and became corrupted.
I would probably recommend everyone switch to dashcam friendly microsd cards (using a usb microsd adapter). Most regular USB flash drives aren't designed for dashcam/constant writing of data and could lead to drive failures.
I guess this begs the question why would you have Sentry Mode active when your car is in your garage? Turn it off on your app.
Having a Blackvue dashcam on our Model S, I'm also aware that when the summer temps start climbing, your typical dashcams mounted in cars, recording with extreme heat temps, will corrupt the video. The cameras are only designed to run within a certain temperature range. I haven't seen anyone bring up this possible temperature issue yet for our Model 3 use, but I'm thinking it's coming. The flashdrives are sitting more or less sealed in an interior area of the center console and doubt there's much in the way of airflow.
Last week I ordered this OTA adapter to work with my Model 3's USB connection. It will allow me to remove the adapter and plug into my new MacBookPro with the new USB-C connection. I'll be using an extra Blackvue 128GB microSD card we have in it, which as you said is meant to do constant writing and rewriting of data.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D1J88CF/
I thought it was obvious I was just testing it out. That being said I don’t think it should activate for changing light. I don’t need to record every time a car goes by or the traffic light changes. It also should never corrupt the card.
xanatos
Member
I see the same problem with sentry mode not overwriting the old files and it's very annoying. It puts everything under SavedClips instead of RecentClips so basically you are guaranteed to run out of space after using sentry mode enough times. Hope they fix this.
One thing you can do to reduce the unnecessary "events" is to park your car so that your front is facing a direction that people don't normally walk within 3 feet of your front bumper. That way, the only "events" you should be getting are the people entering or leaving the cars on your 2 sides. Although you probably don't want see those videos.. some of those people open their door really wide... is like watching a horror clip...is going to hit my car.... is going to hit my car...
jkoya
NA2 NSX
I was also surprised Sentry Mode is constantly recording, even when the car is not locked and just sitting in the garage. I have many clips of just the garage refrigerator and the cars on each side of the Tesla. I guess this is contributing to my battery drain as well ?
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
Sentry is not supposed to be 'always recording'-for one if it's not turned on it's not intended to do anything at all.... and why would you have it on in your own garage?
I just swapped drives (from a 32GB which was plenty big for just dashcam, to a 128GB for long term sentry use) and checked what mine had been doing the last few days before the swap....
I had sentry turned on ~8 hours a day in a work parking lot for several days... there's only one 10-minute bunch of clips saved per day, triggered by walking out to the car to get in to go home. (it's parked someplace with little foot traffic).... that's it.
The dashcam feature, unlike sentry, IS always recording, but unlike sentry recordings will overwrite as needed.
I just swapped drives (from a 32GB which was plenty big for just dashcam, to a 128GB for long term sentry use) and checked what mine had been doing the last few days before the swap....
I had sentry turned on ~8 hours a day in a work parking lot for several days... there's only one 10-minute bunch of clips saved per day, triggered by walking out to the car to get in to go home. (it's parked someplace with little foot traffic).... that's it.
The dashcam feature, unlike sentry, IS always recording, but unlike sentry recordings will overwrite as needed.
Similar threads
