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Teslacam / Sentry mode constantly recording?

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When you have a storage device setup is the TeslaCam/Sentry mode ALWAYS recording? I was expecting that the dash cam would be writing clips to the "RecentClips" directory and constantly overwriting them only when the car was on, and then any time I manually pushed the "save" icon it would save the last 10 minutes over to the "SaveClips" directory where it won't get overwritten.

Then separately I was expecting Sentry mode to write clips to its own directory when it detected motion while the car was parked.

It seems like mine is behaving kind of strange. I setup Sentry mode and tested it in my garage just by walking by the car and it saved a few clips to the "SaveClips" directory without telling me it did anything (I only saw them when I removed the storage device from the car and reviewed it on my computer). I guess I was expecting it to write to a different directory so I would know the clips were from Sentry mode and not just ones I saved during driving.

Then, separately, it seems that the Teslacam/dash cam functionality is constantly recording to the "RecentClips" directory, even when the car is parked in my garage and charging. I just went out to the car and removed the storage device and it has a ton of clips in the "RecentClips" directory that are just totally black since the light in the garage was off. Shouldn't the dash cam portion turn off when the car is off and then only record things when Sentry mode detects motion?

I'm a bit confused on why Sentry mode wrote files into the SavedClips directory without notifying me (and why it doesn't have its own directory), and also why it seems like the RecentClips are constantly being written even when the car is off. What am I doing wrong here?
 
When you have a storage device setup is the TeslaCam/Sentry mode ALWAYS recording? I was expecting that the dash cam would be writing clips to the "RecentClips" directory and constantly overwriting them only when the car was on, and then any time I manually pushed the "save" icon it would save the last 10 minutes over to the "SaveClips" directory where it won't get overwritten.

Then separately I was expecting Sentry mode to write clips to its own directory when it detected motion while the car was parked.

It seems like mine is behaving kind of strange. I setup Sentry mode and tested it in my garage just by walking by the car and it saved a few clips to the "SaveClips" directory without telling me it did anything (I only saw them when I removed the storage device from the car and reviewed it on my computer). I guess I was expecting it to write to a different directory so I would know the clips were from Sentry mode and not just ones I saved during driving.

Then, separately, it seems that the Teslacam/dash cam functionality is constantly recording to the "RecentClips" directory, even when the car is parked in my garage and charging. I just went out to the car and removed the storage device and it has a ton of clips in the "RecentClips" directory that are just totally black since the light in the garage was off. Shouldn't the dash cam portion turn off when the car is off and then only record things when Sentry mode detects motion?

I'm a bit confused on why Sentry mode wrote files into the SavedClips directory without notifying me (and why it doesn't have its own directory), and also why it seems like the RecentClips are constantly being written even when the car is off. What am I doing wrong here?

Short answer, yes.

It records all the time, when the car isn't asleep (if sentry is enabled) so that you can see what happened before whatever trigger the sentry. Should the save clips when something triggers it, with several minutes of history before the trigger.

There are settings to allow you to disable sentry automatically at home/work/favorites so it doesn't record in your garage, wherever else you feel is safe.
 
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If you have Sentry activated, the camera is recording all the time. It has to, as when a Sentry event is triggered, it writes the last 10 minutes to the saved clips folder. If it wasn't on and recording it wouldn't be able to do that. The fix is to toggle Sentry off when at home - see the Sentry settings where you can have Sentry automaticlly turn off at home or work or at favorite locations. Sentry uses a lot of power, so good to have it disabled where you don't need it
 
Ah I see. So basically when Sentry mode is on it just runs the “Teslacam/Dashcam” functionality even when the car is off in case it needs to move the last several minutes of files from the “RecentClips” directory over to the “Sentry” directory. So that’s why you can see a bunch of recent clips in the RecentClips directory even when the car has been off.

The thing that doesn’t make sense to me is that I have it set to not use Sentry mode when the car is at one of two houses (I set one house as “work” and then set Sentry mode to not automatically turn on at either home or work). I have verified that Sentry mode is indeed off by looking in the app while in either of these locations. However, I still find the RecentClips directory to be recording all the time (with the videos of the dark garage). So I’m still not sure why it’s constantly recording to the RecentClips directory even when Sentry mode is off. It seems like it’s just always recording if the dash cam sees a storage device available.