Too dumb for dashcam

[yoimbrian]

I always thought I was fairly computer savvy, or at least not an idiot, but I've had the car for a year now and I for the life of me can't get the USB formatting to work for the dash cam.

I've started with 3 different USB drives, all recommended on the forums somewhere, I've used multiple different programs to reformat to FAT32, I've confirmed many times it is indeed formatted to FAT32, and I've made the root level folder named TESLACAM, and the car still says it is in the wrong format. I've done and re-done it 100s of times, and don't know what else to try. Frustrated is an understatement, its gotten to the point where I don't give people test rides or show off the car anymore because people always want to see that, and when I tell them it doesn't work its like "o,. yea, I figured, Tesla is garbage", and its angered me to the point I'm no longer a Tesla believer, I'm just a guy with an expensive car that gets me to the grocery store and back.

I tried to upload a picture of my drive settings, showing it is indeed FAT32 and there is indeed a folder, but apparently I cant post pictures either.

not having a great day here.

 

[Black306]

Try renaming the folder “TeslaCam” with only T and C capitalized.

 

[yoimbrian]

Didn't work.

 

[DirtyT3sla]

Well your other option is to get a pure tesla flash drive that comes pre formatted. www.puretesla.com or www.puretesla.com/dirtytesla if you'd like to use my affiliate link.

I've been using this for a while and it's plug and play. You don't have to format anything, and comes with USB A and C sides.

 

[yoimbrian]

Well, DirtyT3sla, that is indeed something I haven't tried before. I guess we'll find out in 3-5 days, and I even used your referral.

I don't see why their usb would be different than mine, but whatever, if it works it'll be worth the $50. If it doesn't work, I'll just give up completely and accept the fact I have a $50,000 golf cart.

 

[Nilroc]

Get a Mac Computer?

 

[sduck]

The TeslaCam folder NEEDS to be named TeslaCam - not the all caps version you're showing.

Can you shoot a picture of the error message you say you're getting? Are your USB drives working for other things?

Also, what's taking up all that space on the drive? It looks like maybe you have other stuff on the drive? Post more screen shots of what's in there.

 

[Msjulie]

Just FYI here's the hardware I've been using well over a year and recently it is plugged into a splitter from a taptes wireless charger

MASTER THREAD: USB drives that work with Sentry and TeslaCam

 

[Kevy Baby]

Yeah, somethings not right here.

If the capitalization is correct as noted by @sduck, then I would try asking someone with a Mac (assuming you don't have one) to format it (use the Disk Utility to format for "MS_DOS FAT" which is FAT32). Probably won't make a difference, but after formatting on the Mac, insert the drive into a Windows machine and show & remove any hidden files. I normally don't worry about this last step, but in your case, trying to eliminate any possible issues.

Also, if you have any friends with a Tesla with a working Sentry drive, see if you can borrow it. If not, see if you can reach out to someone in your area in the Midwest/Great Lakes regional forum.

 

[Thumpernator]

When I had trouble with mine, I called Tesla. The Tesla tech told me to reboot the screen before plugging in a new drive. Rebooting the screen is supposed to reset the USB ports and you have a better chance of the system accepting the USB drive.

 

[DirtyT3sla]

Well, DirtyT3sla, that is indeed something I haven't tried before. I guess we'll find out in 3-5 days, and I even used your referral.

I don't see why their usb would be different than mine, but whatever, if it works it'll be worth the $50. If it doesn't work, I'll just give up completely and accept the fact I have a $50,000 golf cart.

Yeah it's very strange you haven't been able to get it to work. Very interested if this solution works for you. Please update me

 

[sgabrie8544]

Try downloading the free version of AOMEI Partition Asst, I formatted my endurance card with this and it worked.

 

[dc121gw]

Just FYI for people saying to rename the folder: On a technical level, FAT32 formatted file systems are not case sensitive. You cannot, for example, create two files in the same directory named "Dog" and "DOG". The same is true for NTFS. Microsoft's design philosophy on this carries over from DOS and the command line, where people would type out filenames, and they decided it would be frustrating to allow files that differed by only upper and lower case. Naturally, Mac and Linux people disagree.

@yoimbrian If you are not able to get this to work, you can message me directly and if you'll send me your drive, I'll format it and return it to you.

 

[Knightshade]

Just FYI for people saying to rename the folder: On a technical level, FAT32 formatted file systems are not case sensitive. You cannot, for example, create two files in the same directory named "Dog" and "DOG". The same is true for NTFS. Microsoft's design philosophy on this carries over from DOS and the command line, where people would type out filenames, and they decided it would be frustrating to allow files that differed by only upper and lower case.

Ok. But.

Naturally, Mac and Linux people disagree..

The car is running Linux.

And thus cares about the capitalization.

 

[dc121gw]

I don't want to get too far offtopic on OP's question, which is getting sentry mode working.

In my experience, FAT32 isn't case sensitive on Linux. I know for sure that it isn't when you mount a FAT32 partition on a Ubuntu server using default settings on mount, and I do this a lot when administering my home Linux servers. Maybe this is an artifact of FAT32's origin as a hack for Windows 95 to have long filenames. NTFS is case sensitive on Linux but not on Windows. And all of the Linux-first file systems like ext4 are case sensitive.

But as with all things technology, I've learned there is always somebody else who is smarter on the internet, and I'm willing to be corrected.

 

[Knightshade]

I don't want to get too far offtopic on OP's question, which is getting sentry mode working.

In my experience, FAT32 isn't case sensitive on Linux. I know for sure that it isn't when you mount a FAT32 partition on a Ubuntu server using default settings on mount, and I do this a lot when administering my home Linux servers. Maybe this is an artifact of FAT32's origin as a hack for Windows 95 to have long filenames. NTFS is case sensitive on Linux but not on Windows. And all of the Linux-first file systems like ext4 are case sensitive.

But as with all things technology, I've learned there is always somebody else who is smarter on the internet, and I'm willing to be corrected.

Ok, I'll correct you

So there's 2 different terms only 1 is being used though.

Case sensitive. Does the file system allow both readme.txt and Readme.txt to exist in the same directory? FAT32 does not. (more about NTFS in a minute)

Case preserving. Meaning will it keep the R in Readme.txt as a capital letter? FAT32 DOES (with LFN support anyway which is basically any OS from this century). So when it gets on a Linux box, that R is still a cap.

(really old FAT, like FAT12, is neither)


Hence why TeslaCam created on FAT32 works on the linux car- but teslacam does not.



Now- NTFS is case sensitive even on windows FYI- it's just not really turned on by default... you can create posix-compliant files that are inherently case sensitive in windows... and you can also use fsutil to make entire directories case sensitive in windows.

Bit deeper dive on some of that here if you're interested-
Tyranid's Lair: NTFS Case Sensitivity on Windows

 

[dc121gw]

Interesting. Maybe there is some aspect to this that isn't apparent to me. I can tell you for sure that "teslacam" as a folder name works as a cam folder in my car just fine.

$ ls -lR /media/usb/teslacam
/media/usb/teslacam:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 21 17:33 RecentClips
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Apr 21 17:33 SavedClips

/media/usb/teslacam/RecentClips:
total 22060
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22586668 Apr 21 17:34 2020-04-22_00-33-28-front.mp4

/media/usb/teslacam/SavedClips:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 21 17:33 2020-04-22_00-33-27

/media/usb/teslacam/SavedClips/2020-04-22_00-33-27:
total 72052
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18812668 Apr 21 17:33 2020-04-22_00-32-43-back.mp4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18376673 Apr 21 17:33 2020-04-22_00-32-43-front.mp4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18345551 Apr 21 17:33 2020-04-22_00-32-43-left_repeater.mp4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18223845 Apr 21 17:33 2020-04-22_00-32-43-right_repeater.mp4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 167 Apr 21 17:33 event.json
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8924 Apr 21 17:34 thumb.png
$

And you can see that the shell doesn't seem to be case sensitive on this partition

/media/usb$ mkdir test
/media/usb$ cp yada ./Test
/media/usb$ ls -l test
total 4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13 Apr 22 01:08 yada

But who knows, maybe there is something in the way I created the USB stick that is unique in some way, or something in the way my server is configured to mount external drives. At any rate, this is totally offtopic and likely very boring, so I'll just leave it there. Cheers!

 

[MP3Mike]

Didn't work.

I wouldn't rename it. Delete it and create it with the proper capitalization the first time.

 

[drtimhill]

How has the drive been partitioned? Are you using MBR (Master Boot Record), GUID or Apple partition map? You should use GUID Partition Map for the size of drive you have, with FAT32 (aka MS-DOS) formatted partition (*not* exFAT). And, as others have noted, the folder must be named "TeslaCam" and in the root of the drive (create it that way, dont rename it).

 

[Mrbrock]

How has the drive been partitioned? Are you using MBR (Master Boot Record), GUID or Apple partition map? You should use GUID Partition Map for the size of drive you have, with FAT32 (aka MS-DOS) formatted partition (*not* exFAT). And, as others have noted, the folder must be named "TeslaCam" and in the root of the drive (create it that way, dont rename it).

Based on the image provided, he is using windows to format and partition or at the very least has the drive plugged into a windows computer). Maybe OP can detail software/steps he is using.

A couple notes.

USB drive must be plugged into one of the front ports to work.
Windows 10 only allows 32GB partitions in FAT32 so third party program or other OS is required (which it appears you already have based on the 120GB partition you created)

My last suggestion would be to name the drive something other than teslacam (or leave the name field blank when formatting) and then create the folder in that drive named TeslaCam. Don’t know why the drive name would cause confusion to the system but it’s something to eliminate to try to make it work.