Tesla Dashcam

[Kaitou Dark]

Good day all,

I'm a new Tesla owner... I'm reading and reading about Tesla Dashcam. I'm very confused on how this Dashcam works. I owned a Dashcam before and it would always keep recording. For some reason... unless I save the clip, I don't see a lot of my recent clips or videos.

Is anyone else having this issue?

 

[Need]

It has an one hour buffer that overwrites itself. So yes, unless you kept saving the clips every 10 minutes (when you press to save, it saves 10 minues), you won't see much.

If your drive is less than 1 hour, you could pull the USB drive out after your drive and copy the 1 hour buffer over to your own device to store. There are some kind of raspberry pi setups out there that you could get to auto copy over the recent clips I think. You have to research on that.

 

[Kaitou Dark]

It has an one hour buffer that overwrites itself. So yes, unless you kept saving the clips every 10 minutes (when you press to save, it saves 10 minues), you won't see much.

If your drive is less than 1 hour, you could pull the USB drive out after your drive and copy the 1 hour buffer over to your own device to store. There are some kind of raspberry pi setups out there that you could get to auto copy over the recent clips I think. You have to research on that.

Thanks for your reply, is there anyway to automatically save it every 10 minutes? I don't understand why they don't just do that

 

[DDrawer]

Thanks for your reply, is there anyway to automatically save it every 10 minutes? I don't understand why they don't just do that

Disk space; Why have tons of useless footage constantly filling up your disk so you have to clear it out all the time when you could just tell it to save the last 10 minutes when you know there is something you want to save?

 

[Kaitou Dark]

Disk space; Why have tons of useless footage constantly filling up your disk so you have to clear it out all the time when you could just tell it to save the last 10 minutes when you know there is something you want to save?

I think whole purpose of having DashCam is to have the actual footage. When you are in a accident or in any incident... not everyone will be like "Oh let me save that clip", in the heat of the moment, you may just get out of your car or if you get in a accident.. you might not be able to save clip. I have a 1TB SSD, I don't think i'm worried about Disk Space, should be a option to set it and forget it. I wouldn't mind deleting old clips automatically for the last 30 days. Deleting clips shouldn't be hard now that we have DashCam Viewer as well.

Personally, I think it should be like a surveillance camera. Just go back to the time / date to event occurred when needed.

 

[serpico007]

I turn on the feature Honk To Save because if it is important to save, most likely I'm honking at the obstacle on the road!

 

[DDrawer]

I'm not a camera guy by any means so I don't know this as fact, but I just looked up a "how much storage do I need" type calculator, and for 4 cameras recording at 1080p (not sure what the res of the tesla cam is) in the lowest space file format the the calculator allowed, says you'd use up about 700GB of space every week. So your 1tb drive (which is much larger than the average person using Tesla dashcam is using) would need to be cleaned up every week or two. If you forget to do that, and the disk is full when you do need it for a crash or something, that would make it impossible to save the footage you need. So there is that angle to consider as well.

Not saying I don't agree with the ability to choose how you would like footage saved, that would of course be the best solution to everyone's needs. I do think the revolving save with the option to save 10 minutes on button press or if you honk the horn is a pretty good solution for the majority of people though.

 

[Kaitou Dark]

I'm not a camera guy by any means so I don't know this as fact, but I just looked up a "how much storage do I need" type calculator, and for 4 cameras recording at 1080p (not sure what the res of the tesla cam is) in the lowest space file format the the calculator allowed, says you'd use up about 700GB of space every week. So your 1tb drive (which is much larger than the average person using Tesla dashcam is using) would need to be cleaned up every week or two. If you forget to do that, and the disk is full when you do need it for a crash or something, that would make it impossible to save the footage you need. So there is that angle to consider as well.

Not saying I don't agree with the ability to choose how you would like footage saved, that would of course be the best solution to everyone's needs. I do think the revolving save with the option to save 10 minutes on button press or if you honk the horn is a pretty good solution for the majority of people though.

I read online;

TeslaCam main one hour loop: 28 MB per minute x 4 cameras x 60 minutes = 6.7 GB (Gigabytes)
TeslaCam/Sentry saved event: 28 MB per minute x 4 cameras x 10 minutes = 1.1 GB

 

[DDrawer]

So if my maths are correct that would mean a 128GB drive would get filled up in less than a day at 6.7gb per hour, and less than a week for a 1TB drive?

 

[frankvb]

One thing that would help is if there was a config setting to change the duration of the (now one hour) rotating recording if you have a large enough drive connected.

 

[Dude85D]

For me, the Tesla's dashcam hasn't been very reliable in recording what I think it should have recorded. I've turned on Honk to Save but found out today, after removing the SSD, that didn't happen. I don't have recordings from the last hour on the road, but I do have random recordings from 2-3 weeks ago, but not every trip, just some trips. I'm also confused as to what it keeps.

I'm seriously researching into how to run the cable and power for my trusty, dependable BlackView system. I'll use Tesla's dashcam to augment Blackvue and for Sentry Mode. Can't hurt to have 10 cameras in the car, right?

Let me know if anyone figures out how to drop the headliner in the back. The top trim piece on hatch was really easy to remove.

 

[khamilton6]

Good day all,

I'm a new Tesla owner... I'm reading and reading about Tesla Dashcam. I'm very confused on how this Dashcam works. I owned a Dashcam before and it would always keep recording. For some reason... unless I save the clip, I don't see a lot of my recent clips or videos.

Is anyone else having this issue?

I havent gone and double checked yet, but I thought with one of the last updates, it saved all clips until you ran out of space, then it overwrote old with new. Check one of the last couple updates.

 

[bons]

Also a newbie here, I cannot seem to get teslacam to work at all: my initial setup is 120GB SSD (Fat32), partitioned for Music and Teslacam, added the Teslacam folder. Initially music worked but eventually that stopped showing up under music. When I checked the drive there is no footage from any sentry mode, or any file at all. New setup, exFAT, still no music, no recordings. -2017 MS.

 

[Saghost]

I think whole purpose of having DashCam is to have the actual footage. When you are in a accident or in any incident... not everyone will be like "Oh let me save that clip", in the heat of the moment, you may just get out of your car or if you get in a accident.. you might not be able to save clip. I have a 1TB SSD, I don't think i'm worried about Disk Space, should be a option to set it and forget it. I wouldn't mind deleting old clips automatically for the last 30 days. Deleting clips shouldn't be hard now that we have DashCam Viewer as well.

Personally, I think it should be like a surveillance camera. Just go back to the time / date to event occurred when needed.

The car automatically saves footage for Sentry events and accidents, as well as anything from the past hour.

So you should be covered except for incidents that aren’t severe enough to meet the car’s accident definition and don’t occur to you to save until at least an hour of driving has passed.

 

[Wennfred]

Same issues since 3 updates ago, shows the flash card mounted but won’t record, Wont record Sentry model either. Service Center appointment this Thursday June 4th, Currently on 2020.16.2.1 on the Model 3.

Note that the Model Y with 2020.16.2.5 is recording Sentry model events but not Dashcam.

Fred

 

[Dude85D]

Installed Blackvue 900S 2ch. It was easier than Model 3. Now I can use Sentry for parking, since it has side cameras, and backup for Blackvue.

 

[Puma2020]

I also have Save on Honk selected. A few days ago, a black bear crossed the road in front of me and disappeared into the woods. I beeped my horn to save that footage as well as to hopefully scare the bear a bit further away from the road. After my trip, I went to the DashCam viewer and sadly, no footage of the trip or the bear. Lots of sentry videos.
The next day I went through the user's manual (again) and tried to see what I had done wrong. It appears I had set up everything correctly. Went to the DashCam viewer and viola, a 10 minute video of the bear was present. Today I went to recall that bear video and sadly, it had disappeared again. Any ideas?

 

[JCLee]

So if my maths are correct that would mean a 128GB drive would get filled up in less than a day at 6.7gb per hour, and less than a week for a 1TB drive?

Not really. What Tesla should do is continuous recording/saving while driving, but when parked, only save when there's any activity (Sentry event). That's what most of the dash cams are doing. If you drive 2 hrs per day, 7 days a week, that's 13.4 GB per day, 93.8 GB per week. It will take more than 2 months to fill up 1 TB. Tesla should also allow automatic overwriting for the continuously recorded footage, so that users don't have to manually clean up old files when the drive is full.

BTW, I'm using 2 TB SSD and I drive less than 10 hrs per week so I vote for continuous recording option.

 

[Saghost]

I also have Save on Honk selected. A few days ago, a black bear crossed the road in front of me and disappeared into the woods. I beeped my horn to save that footage as well as to hopefully scare the bear a bit further away from the road. After my trip, I went to the DashCam viewer and sadly, no footage of the trip or the bear. Lots of sentry videos.
The next day I went through the user's manual (again) and tried to see what I had done wrong. It appears I had set up everything correctly. Went to the DashCam viewer and viola, a 10 minute video of the bear was present. Today I went to recall that bear video and sadly, it had disappeared again. Any ideas?

I believe Sentry videos are in a different folder from Dashcam videos, or they were at one point. Have you checks all the folders on the card?

 

[Wennfred]

I also have Save on Honk selected. A few days ago, a black bear crossed the road in front of me and disappeared into the woods. I beeped my horn to save that footage as well as to hopefully scare the bear a bit further away from the road. After my trip, I went to the DashCam viewer and sadly, no footage of the trip or the bear. Lots of sentry videos.
The next day I went through the user's manual (again) and tried to see what I had done wrong. It appears I had set up everything correctly. Went to the DashCam viewer and viola, a 10 minute video of the bear was present. Today I went to recall that bear video and sadly, it had disappeared again. Any ideas?

Check your profile, ensure you are using the one with the Honk on save.

Fred