Strange TeslaCam behavior?

[jonquiljo]

Hi. I have a Model 3 P3D- delivered in early December. I have set up TeslaCam with a Samsung T5 plugged into one of the main console ports. No hubs, nothing. I formatted the T5 to Fat-32 with a Mac. There is a single "TeslaCam" folder in the root directory. TeslaCam indicates that it is running all the time. That red dot is there all the time (as opposed to gone when I remove the drive). So all seems that it was working.

I finally looked at the output today and it all was strange. The one minute clips for TeslaCam and Sentry are a bit annoying, but that is the least of it. TeslaCam seems to record a bunch of 1 minute clips and then seems to stop. Or, it will not even start right away. Either way, I do not get full coverage of any drive, I get maybe 5-6 minutes of it and Tesla cam seems to be fed up and quit. My view from the drivers seat looking at the screen shows that TeslaCam is running (the red dot in the Teslacam icon is on), so it must think it is recording when it really is not.

Some days TeslaCam will not record at all. They are missing totally from the T5 when I look at the data. Frankly I just don't get it. Is my TeslaCam broken of does it make junk like this for everyone? I did check the T5 and it has used perhaps 50GB out of the ~500GB available. So this is not a problem of writing over old clips, etc.

The sentry footage is odd too. More 1 minute clips, but at least they are there for as long as Sentry is running. The issue here seems to be that I turn Sentry on, step out of the car (which can be seen in the clips) and Sentry runs for the duration I am away from the car. You can see the mirrors retract as I walk away from the car -- the car is locking itself. No incidents, nothing. No one is even peering in the window. Sentry just runs and runs until I get back to the car and stop it.

Quite frankly I think that the Sentry sees a car driving by on the street behind me and that will trigger another event. The first event being my walking away. Either way, Sentry acts more like TeslaCam and records a continuous set of 1 minute clips of what is around my car. But my car isn't being "violated" in any way.

None of this seems like it is working correctly. I'd have to investigate Sentry a bit more to get a better idea as to why it continuously runs. But TeslaCam seems totally screwed up, I see no point in using it if it randomly records parts of my drive and not others - though indicating falsely that it records the whole drive.

Has anyone heard of this stuff happening? Help!

 

[Knightshade]

I'm confused by your sentry description.

You say only 50GB is full on the drive but sentry "records" all the time. 50GB is 7 hours of recordings so did you just get the car yesterday?

Are these clips in the sentry folder or elsewhere? Do you have hundreds of sentry alerts when you get back to the car?


To clarify for you how the system is actually meant to work- sentry never records anything

You can turn sentry on without even having a USB drive in there.

It is always dashcam that does the recording (though it generally will overwrite anything older than an hour unless it's in one of the saved/sentry folders)

The only thing sentry does, related to video, is if it goes into an alert state, it will move the 10 most recent minutes of the dashcam video into the sentry folder. That's it.



Anyway definitely sounds like you have issues- first thing I'd try (assuming a reboot didn't resolve anything) is try first the other USB port.... and then if still failing another recording device (in each port)....and see if any of that makes any difference. Same behavior on both devices and both ports I'd file a service ticket.

 

[Dr. J]

It's useful to review the user manual, page 73.

"Within the “TeslaCam” folder, there are three sub-folders: Recent Clips, Saved Clips, and Sentry Clips. The footage in Recent Clips constantly loops in a 60-minute cycle when the cameras are activated. Therefore, the footage is constantly being overwritten every hour unless the footage is saved. When an event is recorded, one video is recorded for each of the front, rear (if equipped), left, and right cameras.

Saved footage is located in either the Saved Clips or Sentry Clips folder. Footage in the Saved Clips folder contains all saved recordings from dashcam, which have been manually saved by touching the dashcam icon on the touchscreen. Sentry Clips contains all saved footage from Sentry Mode events, which have been automatically saved when the Alert or Alarm state was triggered. Once footage of a particular event is saved, the latest 10 minutes of video is archived in your flash drive labeled with a unique timestamp."

My understanding is that Sentry mode is not continuously saving dashcam footage. Instead, whenever there is an incident (usually someone walking or driving in view of an active camera), the most recent 10 minutes of footage is saved. When you hop in the car, you'll see a message if there are any Sentry mode events, and it will say how many. Multiple by 10, and that's how many 1-minute clips have been saved. In reviewing footage, always start with the last minute to see what triggered the event.

Edit: I believe a recent firmware update now triggers saved dashcam footage whenever the horn is honked, and I think airbag deployment has always triggered the same. I'm not sure what folder those events would be saved in.

 

[jonquiljo]

It's useful to review the user manual, page 73.

"Within the “TeslaCam” folder, there are three sub-folders: Recent Clips, Saved Clips, and Sentry Clips. The footage in Recent Clips constantly loops in a 60-minute cycle when the cameras are activated. Therefore, the footage is constantly being overwritten every hour unless the footage is saved. When an event is recorded, one video is recorded for each of the front, rear (if equipped), left, and right cameras.

Saved footage is located in either the Saved Clips or Sentry Clips folder. Footage in the Saved Clips folder contains all saved recordings from dashcam, which have been manually saved by touching the dashcam icon on the touchscreen. Sentry Clips contains all saved footage from Sentry Mode events, which have been automatically saved when the Alert or Alarm state was triggered. Once footage of a particular event is saved, the latest 10 minutes of video is archived in your flash drive labeled with a unique timestamp."

My understanding is that Sentry mode is not continuously saving dashcam footage. Instead, whenever there is an incident (usually someone walking or driving in view of an active camera), the most recent 10 minutes of footage is saved. When you hop in the car, you'll see a message if there are any Sentry mode events, and it will say how many. Multiple by 10, and that's how many 1-minute clips have been saved. In reviewing footage, always start with the last minute to see what triggered the event.

Edit: I believe a recent firmware update now triggers saved dashcam footage whenever the horn is honked, and I think airbag deployment has always triggered the same. I'm not sure what folder those events would be saved in.

Most of the 50GB used is in Saved clips. But these saved clips are, again, partial recordings of “trips” I have made. On any one day of saved clips, there are about 8 minutes of TeslaCam footage. Where the rest went, I don't know.

in Recent Clips I found 4 40 second clips from my latest drive. That’s it. I drove a lot more than 40 seconds. This is what alerted me to the problem. TeslaCam seems to simply recrd random bits (in this case 40 seconds), and look like its further recording when its not.

In Sentry Clips, I see a lots of clips that likely correspond to the events generated. But, when I look at the clips, I see nothing - as if I turned Sentry on, left the car and sentry is activated by any event it can see - cars driving by, etc. Something is wrong with Sentry too .. but at least it is recording. TeslaCam is not.

I guess I’ll reboot the car, clean off and reformat the drive and try again. This time I’ll try the other USB port.

 

[Dr. J]

Most of the 50GB used is in Saved clips. But these saved clips are, again, partial recordings of “trips” I have made. On any one day of saved clips, there are about 8 minutes of TeslaCam footage. Where the rest went, I don't know.

in Recent Clips I found 4 40 second clips from my latest drive. That’s it. I drove a lot more than 40 seconds. This is what alerted me to the problem. TeslaCam seems to simply recrd random bits (in this case 40 seconds), and look like its further recording when its not.

In Sentry Clips, I see a lots of clips that likely correspond to the events generated. But, when I look at the clips, I see nothing - as if I turned Sentry on, left the car and sentry is activated by any event it can see - cars driving by, etc. Something is wrong with Sentry too .. but at least it is recording. TeslaCam is not.

I guess I’ll reboot the car, clean off and reformat the drive and try again. This time I’ll try the other USB port.

That is definitely not normal behavior. Good luck.

 

[animorph]

It's been a while since I played with TeslaCam, so maybe things have changed.

What I saw was TeslaCam recording the last one hour in one minute segments, for as long as the car is awake. That might include a bunch of clips of your garage, or it might include no clips at all if it's been more than an hour since it was last recording. It should only save clips if you touch the TeslaCam button. Those should remain until deleted by you.

Sentry mode will save clips if triggered by visual motion on any camera. If you park in an area with a lot of traffic, you'll get a lot of saved clips.

I haven't seen any clips that weren't very close to one minute in length. Odd sizes might be an indication of a problem. That problem might be a USB drive that is slower than it likes. That would be the first thing to try.

 

[TLLMRRJ]

Try a hard reboot.