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the "rear camera doesn't work" problem

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astrorob

stealth performance M3
Aug 27, 2014
635
170
oakland, ca
today when i powered up and tried to leave the garage, the backup camera did not work. subsequently i realized that none of the cameras must be working, since the machine vision stuff was completely offline. furthermore the GPS was not working and my map position was not updating. not understanding if the problem would get worse, i drove home, scheduled a service appointment, and took another car.

from reading here i see that letting the car go into deep sleep should cure the problem and sure enough when i booted up just now at least the rear camera was working again.

for those of you that have had this problem: is this something that all of these M3s just do, or is there some marginal or defective component that can be replaced by the mobile service folks? as a hardware guy this sounds like some kind of power-on reset bug which could be the result of a design flaw.

thanks
 
today when i powered up and tried to leave the garage, the backup camera did not work. subsequently i realized that none of the cameras must be working, since the machine vision stuff was completely offline. furthermore the GPS was not working and my map position was not updating. not understanding if the problem would get worse, i drove home, scheduled a service appointment, and took another car.

from reading here i see that letting the car go into deep sleep should cure the problem and sure enough when i booted up just now at least the rear camera was working again.

for those of you that have had this problem: is this something that all of these M3s just do, or is there some marginal or defective component that can be replaced by the mobile service folks? as a hardware guy this sounds like some kind of power-on reset bug which could be the result of a design flaw.

thanks

Personally, it’s been an “off and on” relationship. Certain software updates have been better than others. Recently (last 6 months) it’s been solid with rarely a delay in backup camera.
 
Personally, it’s been an “off and on” relationship. Certain software updates have been better than others. Recently (last 6 months) it’s been solid with rarely a delay in backup camera.

by this do you mean that sometimes the rear camera comes up black but after a few seconds displays video? that might be a different problem..? for me the cameras did not work for the duration of my 20 minute round trip...
 
argh, they did whatever remote diags and log pulling in preparation for the appointment and claimed they couldn't find anything wrong. canceled my service appointment and advised me to do the two-trackball + brake pedal reboot if it happens again (and log another service request.)

clearly this is a real problem based on the number of forum posts. so i can only take this to mean they don't know what the solution actually is. or they think whatever it is is not serious enough to warrant anything else than a three-finger salute.
 
I have a model X, and I first noticed the rear camera stopped working after the software update late Nov/early Dec (cant quite remember exact date). Its been there since and I have specifically noted that it stops working after the trunk has been opened and closed
 
I have a model X, and I first noticed the rear camera stopped working after the software update late Nov/early Dec (cant quite remember exact date). Its been there since and I have specifically noted that it stops working after the trunk has been opened and closed

interesting - since my trunk was open all night it seems there is a commonality here. thanks for posting that.
 
argh, they did whatever remote diags and log pulling in preparation for the appointment and claimed they couldn't find anything wrong. canceled my service appointment and advised me to do the two-trackball + brake pedal reboot if it happens again (and log another service request.)

clearly this is a real problem based on the number of forum posts. so i can only take this to mean they don't know what the solution actually is. or they think whatever it is is not serious enough to warrant anything else than a three-finger salute.
In my experience, calling the SC for help on this is usually useless. Either wait with the car unplugged and asleep (sentry mode off, doors locked and closed, etc). Usually a good nights sleep fixes it. If not, unplug the 12V battery and HV battery contactor harness and wait about 3 minutes. Button it back up and get on the road again. This always fixes my camera and GPS issues.
 
I've just had the reversing camera go black on me.
When I selected reverse I could see the reversing guidelines but no video from the camera. GPS/Navi working normally

I did a 'screen reboot', as I've heard it called. (Pressing the two scroll wheels on the steering down and holding them down for 10 seconds) and the reversing camera was back.
 
...clearly this is a real problem based on the number of forum posts. so i can only take this to mean they don't know what the solution actually is..
Yes it is a known issue at Tesla which is waiting a proper solution.

In my experience, calling the SC for help on this is usually useless. Either wait with the car unplugged and asleep (sentry mode off, doors locked and closed, etc). Usually a good nights sleep fixes it. If not, unplug the 12V battery and HV battery contactor harness and wait about 3 minutes..
I had a good experience with the SC and they got it working again for me straight away. As you say though, putting it to sleep or power is the way to recover the camera, until they fix the issue.

I've just had the reversing camera go black on me...
I did a 'screen reboot', as I've heard it called. (Pressing the two scroll wheels on the steering down and holding them down for 10 seconds) and the reversing camera was back.
When my reverse camera died I tried this method as as a first port of call but it did not work. Could it be that it worked for you because you did not have dashcam or sentry mode in use?

If it happens to me again, my is plan is to disable sentry mode, which will allow the car to deep sleep. I expect that will recover it. Below is the SC report. They verbally said to disable sentry mode which will of course will prevent deep the sleep cycle AND to consider not using sentry mode until the issue is properly fixed. I am happy to keep using sentry though and deal with the issue as it arises for now.

upload_2020-1-22_12-20-28.png
 
going into sleep and out of it is like a pc going into suspend and then resuming. I've seen many windows systems have their ethernet not work reliably on suspend/resumes.

essentially, its a driver issue, and yes, linux does have drivers; obviously not windows drivers, but if things are put into low power states; coming back out of sleep may do a better 'init' to the systems (hw+sw) and if any were stuck before, this can sometimes force things to work again.

to me, it sounds like some things crashed and the manager process that is supposed to keep it running is not doing its job. that, or its restarting a thing that crashed, but not restarting enough of the process 'group' that has to all restart, to be at the same starting state.
 
well i hope it's a driver issue and not some kind of power-on reset race or other improper reset problem in hardware.

i also tried the "two button" reset a couple of times and that did not fix the problem. if it happens again i'll try the 3-button reset.

i do have a USB installed for dash cam but it recovered without removing the USB. sentry mode was not on.
 
"When my reverse camera died I tried this method as as a first port of call but it did not work. Could it be that it worked for you because you did not have dashcam or sentry mode in use?"


Yes, I have no dashcam or sentrymode.
 
the one time my cameras all went out (rear and all the others, so no auto-steer) the 2 button console reboot didn't fix it. the whole drive was camera-blind ;(

the next day it was working again.

the console reset trick is often not enough to trigger the camera system into working. worth a try, but don't be surprised if it doesn't bring it back just by itself.
 
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the elephant in the room, to me, is that the camera system can crash and not auto-restart nearly instantly.

there's no way this car can go beyond level-2 if the camera sensors are not redundant and reliable.

safety critical things like steering, motor and brake will work and those are isolated from the less critical things. that's good and that's really the minimum needed to make a safe, driveable car, today.

but if elon thinks we can run level 5 in the model 3, I'm not convinced that this one critical system is going to be something we can count on.

additionally, there is no auto-clean for any of the visual sensors. I try to manually keep my 'cameras' clean but you can't always do that and if you get mud splashed, its not ok that a camera stops being a useful sensor for that drive session.

on the new visualizations, its cool to see the traffic lights and colors. but I'm seeing lots of empty traffic lights; and those are often the ones that are at too strong of an angle for the front camera(s) to catch. if the car can't see the lights (or hear from other trusted nearby cars what the light states are) then how can city driving ever be possible?

forget the dream of redundant camera systems, heated/selfcleaning lens areas - it would would be great to always be able to USE the camera system, at all times. starting the car in the AM and having the backup cam (and other cams) be 'out' - that's not acceptable. its a P1 bug ;(
 
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on the new visualizations, its cool to see the traffic lights and colors. but I'm seeing lots of empty traffic lights; and those are often the ones that are at too strong of an angle for the front camera(s) to catch. if the car can't see the lights (or hear from other trusted nearby cars what the light states are) then how can city driving ever be possible?

yep i see that too, especially at a particular light on a steep hill where the sun shines right into it in the afternoon. the neural net can't decide if the light is red or yellow and keeps oscillating between those two states.

i went to my service appt today and mentioned the camera problem. the SA said the flurry of firmware updates at the end of 2019 may have been related to my OP, but he seemed to be talking more about the FSD preview malfunctioning than the cameras going offline.
 
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the one time my cameras all went out (rear and all the others, so no auto-steer) the 2 button console reboot didn't fix it. the whole drive was camera-blind ;(

the next day it was working again.

the console reset trick is often not enough to trigger the camera system into working. worth a try, but don't be surprised if it doesn't bring it back just by itself.
Exact same thing for me (still black after several reboots). Next morning it was working fine and haven't had a issue again for a couple months??
 
a console reboot does not trigger a sleep/wake cycle from other (apparently, key) components.

there is no way for a user to force that other than a true car-level reboot. but, a natural sleep/wakeup that the car initiates, itself, will often clear any temp faults that happened during runtime.

hate to say it, but its kind of common to have watchdogs and forced reboots of various systems, just to avoid accumulated mem leaks and stuck 'resources'. its not ideal, but its what happens when you have very complex software and lots of continuous updates (from developers).

the 'full sleep/wake' cycle could very well be something that restarts key systems that were previously stuck, due to any number of reasons.
 
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