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TeslaCam stopped working

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I have similar issue. TeslaCam is working fine, but Sentry Mode doesn't do anything. It show as active on the car and in the app, but it does not trigger and does not prevent the car from sleeping. I tried changing the USB disk, rebooting the MCU, and peering down the car to no avail. This issue started after upgrading to 2019.36.2.4. Upgrading to 2019.40.2.1 did not resolve it.
 
My teslacam drive is a high endurance microSD with a USB adapter. Worked fine for months. Then today, I noticed no icon. I tried both console USB slots. Tried cold reboot (no joy). I unplugged and plugged it in again. I reformatted the USB twice, and I notice that it seems to be fine in my Mac. I Put in my old USB and received this message "Some clips not saved. USB too slow for DashCam. Use drive that writes at 4mb/sec or higher". But with the old USB, I get a working dashcam icon which is progress. I have 2020.4.1. I guess I'm going to try to purchase a new USB adapter? Any other ideas?
 
OK. I may have fixed the problem. I sprung for 12.00 for a new MicroSD USB reader -- identical to my prior one. I put in my old MicroSD card, and it now seems to work. Could be a minor anomaly in the readers? Although both worked fine in my computer.
 
Weirdly enough, I’m now getting the ‘too slow’ error again. However, it seems to only happen upon activation of Sentry Mode. Before, it would happen anytime; driving, parked, didn’t matter.

About 2 months ago I got the error again but the drive was almost full so I chalked it up to that. Deleted all the files and it was fine until today after coming back to the car after shopping and there were Sentry Mode alerts. Like before, the drive was pretty full so I deleted all the files again but got the error again after parking with Sentry Mode activations.
 
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While not definitively proven, all common sense indicates that it's a software issue with the car. Do yourself a favor and get an inexpensive USB thumb drive. I recommend the SanDisk CZ600 Cruzer Glide USB 3.0 256 GB Flash Drive from Costco for $33.

There is a pinned thread in the User Interface sub-forum titled "MASTER THREAD: USB drives that work with Sentry and TeslaCam" that discusses this ad naseum.

It's been explained ad nauseam by those of us who understand storage and what's actually going on here why the symptoms don't necessarily imply a software issue, but I won't go into it again here.

Yes, a layman's understanding of it will lead you to believe that it must be a Tesla software issue, but it's far more complicated than you're realizing.
 
It's been explained ad nauseam by those of us who understand storage and what's actually going on here why the symptoms don't necessarily imply a software issue, but I won't go into it again here.

Yes, a layman's understanding of it will lead you to believe that it must be a Tesla software issue, but it's far more complicated than you're realizing.



Owners have had 2 Teslas- one with errors the other without. And swapped the storage device.

The problem stayed with the car.

Which it wouldn't if the storage device was the problem.

Likewise many have reported issues introduced when a SW update happened, and others issues going away when a SW update happens...again without changing the storage device.

And folks have reported various issues on every type of storage device- including on ones that work just fine for other people.


Blaming the storage device is the lazy excuse, but doesn't hold up to known facts.
 
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Owners have had 2 Teslas- one with errors the other without. And swapped the storage device.

The problem stayed with the car.

Which it wouldn't if the storage device was the problem.

Likewise many have reported issues introduced when a SW update happened, and others issues going away when a SW update happens...again without changing the storage device.

And folks have reported various issues on every type of storage device- including on ones that work just fine for other people.


Blaming the storage device is the lazy excuse, but doesn't hold up to known facts.

It's all been explained to you before. You consider storage as deterministic all the time write speed when this isn't how real world storage works at all. Additionally, all these Teslas are running the same exact software so issues would manifest on every Tesla the same way with a given storage device if they worked like you believe.

In the real world, cheap storage, while it meets an average sequential write speed/s has widely varying instantaneous write speeds, especially given small writes that necessitate read/erase/write cycle, as well as the stalling effects of a given cell failure (which can happen far sooner than you realize with poor wear leveling as we find in these devices). When we are streaming data to these devices to ensure that as much video is copied in the chance of a crash that renders the system inoperable (as opposed to a large buffer that then destages), the system is going to be very sensitive to these types of slow downs.

Basically, you assume cheap flash performs like the enterprise grade stuff I deal with every day that costs an order of magnitude or more more just to mitigate these types of issues. You don't understand the complexities of storage. It's as simple as that.

You've made a decision, and you aren't interested in hearing why your position doesn't hold true. Enjoy your faith based troubleshooting I guess.
 
It's all been explained to you before.

Not in any way that actually refutes the contrary real world evidence, no.

You consider storage as deterministic all the time write speed

No, I sure don't.

random writes will be slower than sequential writes for example.

Writes on a nearly full storage device will be slower than a nearly empty one for another.

So you're already starting from a fundamentally wrong assumption on what I've been explaining.


Additionally, all these Teslas are running the same exact software so issues would manifest on every Tesla the same way with a given storage device if they worked like you believe.

This is simply utter nonsense.

There's millions of people on the same software on the same model of iphone... some of which have issues others don't.

Ditto android phones.

Ditto hundreds of millions of PCs and macs.


Not all of them are always doing the exact same things in the exact same ways under the exact same conditions- even if their OS version and hardware are identical.

For example someone who tends to let their storage fill up is more likely to run into slowdowns, as all flash storage gets slower as it gets really full.

That's not something inherently wrong with the storage device though.



In the real world, cheap storage, while it meets an average sequential write speed/s has widely varying instantaneous write speeds

And yet- the required write speed here is so low- even the crappiest flash keys benchmark several times faster.

And many of the ones that'd had "problems" are 10-20 times faster in testing.

We've had folks who tested their specific storage device and never got under 30MB/s write for example... versus the 2MB it actually uses (or the 4MB Tesla specs).

But still had problems.

Because it's not an issue with the storage hardware.


Likewise- if it were, moving that "unreliable" device to another car would show the same problem

But it doesn't.

The problem stays with the car when the guy who owns 2 did that test.

How do you explain that if it's the storage device and not the car/software?



You've made a decision, and you aren't interested in hearing why your position doesn't hold true. Enjoy your faith based troubleshooting I guess.


Weird this is your summary when I've provided a slew of fact based, real world tested, examples of you being wrong.
 
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It's been explained ad nauseam by those of us who understand storage and what's actually going on here why the symptoms don't necessarily imply a software issue, but I won't go into it again here.
I guess I'm just too dumb to be logical.

You can try to explain it away with technical jargon (which I've skimmed) but it doesn't hold up to the smell test.
 
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Going to necro this thread...same problem as OP.

2018 M3 LR here. Have had car for almost 3 years, with no dashcam issues. Dashcam has been working fine but today while driving with my wife I happen to notice Dashcam icon was completely missing. As luck would have it, we almost got hit by a FedEx truck literally 10 minutes later, so not having it recording was making me nervous.

Steps I have taken:
- Removed and reinserted thumbdrive
- Tried thumb drive in second slot
- Format drive via in car screen
- Reboot with brake +2 thumb buttons
- Switched thumb drive with 2 others which I confirmed work on home computer + format via in car screen
- Reboot again with newly formatted other drives in place, one at a time

No luck, see photo, still no Dashcam icon, but sentry mode appears active. Interestingly, each time I formatted the drives, the dashcam icon would appear for a few seconds (no red dot though) but then went away. If I managed to hit the icon quick enough, it would give me option to launch viewer, etc, but then went away.

Car did a software update a day or two ago, (2021.24.5) and I don't remember seeing icon since, but that may be coincidence.

Thoughts?
 

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Going to necro this thread...same problem as OP.

2018 M3 LR here. Have had car for almost 3 years, with no dashcam issues. Dashcam has been working fine but today while driving with my wife I happen to notice Dashcam icon was completely missing. As luck would have it, we almost got hit by a FedEx truck literally 10 minutes later, so not having it recording was making me nervous.

Steps I have taken:
- Removed and reinserted thumbdrive
- Tried thumb drive in second slot
- Format drive via in car screen
- Reboot with brake +2 thumb buttons
- Switched thumb drive with 2 others which I confirmed work on home computer + format via in car screen
- Reboot again with newly formatted other drives in place, one at a time

No luck, see photo, still no Dashcam icon, but sentry mode appears active. Interestingly, each time I formatted the drives, the dashcam icon would appear for a few seconds (no red dot though) but then went away. If I managed to hit the icon quick enough, it would give me option to launch viewer, etc, but then went away.

Car did a software update a day or two ago, (2021.24.5) and I don't remember seeing icon since, but that may be coincidence.

Thoughts?
Try this...

Reformat your drive in exFAT (use a computer, not the car to format it). Give it a go, and get back to us. :)