Why is my TeslaCam Quality terrible!

[HankLloydRight]

f you want to keep recording your precious while parked, with an aftermarket solution you have to either buy a voltage cutoff gadget to avoid draining your car battery, since your dash cam is plunged on the always on power, or install an expensive dash cam dedicated battery your cam would run off instead of your car battery.

This is absolutely not true. You can run a dashcam 24x7 in a Tesla without causing any problems. They do run off the 12v battery, but the traction battery kicks in to recharge the 12v as-needed. I've been running my two-channel BLACKSYS HD dashcam on an unswitched 12v line for years now. I'm also running the Front camera switch and my own Pedestrian horn on the same unswitched 12v line. None of these devices individually or together run down the car's battery any appreciable amount. The total current these draw is so small compared to the amount of charge in the main battery, it won't make a difference at all.

You do need the "voltage cutoff" devices in ICE cars where your only power source is the 12v battery, and can be drained down.

 

[AdamMacDon]

This is absolutely not true. You can run a dashcam 24x7 in a Tesla without causing any problems. They do run off the 12v battery, but the traction battery kicks in to recharge the 12v as-needed. I've been running my two-channel BLACKSYS HD dashcam on an unswitched 12v line for years now. I'm also running the Front camera switch and my own Pedestrian horn on the same unswitched 12v line. None of these devices individually or together run down the car's battery an appreciable amount. The total current these draw is so small compared to the amount of charge in the main battery, it won't make a difference at all.

You do need the "voltage cutoff" devices in ICE cars where your only power source is the 12v battery, and can be drained down.

This. The DC/DC system is always active and will keep your 12V battery constantly topped up, even if the car is sitting for days. However, keep in mind that having a constant drain on the 12V battery will likely reduce it's lifespan a bit. Might be worth it to you for security, but this will depend case to case.

 

[calvin_xl]

Perfect so the power drain inconvenience is gone.
I bought my aftermarket dash cam in the first place because of the quality of the built in, I was not planning to use it for parking mode.
My 2 cents just for that it is worth it.

Now I could even tap in an unswitch 12v somewhere and run both in parking mode I guess.

 

[holmgang]

the video is optimized for the cars processing , not for human viewing

 

[fr100]

Do you have AP 2.5? The quality of the recording is much better with hardware 3.

 

[cgiGuy]

No problem, your mileage will vary significantly depending on lighting issues, rain/snow, and the alignment of the stars, haha! Occasionally the purple lines will obscure the camera completely rendering your backup camera nearly unusable. You'll have to either disconnect the HV and 12V battery connectors or wait several hours without the car plugged in for this to go away if it happens. I highly recommend a Blackvue dashcam if you want high quality 1080 or 4k footage. Just be happy if you never see this:

View attachment 531284

Holy smokes... that looks like a service visit to me.

 

[AdamMacDon]

Holy smokes... that looks like a service visit to me.

Hahaha not worth that for me, my SC is a 4 hour drive and $110 ferry ride each way. I just pulled the 12v battery and HV battery contactor. Wait 2 minutes and plug it back in, problem fixed!

 

[Thelycandraven]

I was also expecting too much from the tesla cam quality. I have a brand new 2022 MYP and I don't think I have any vertical lines, they were probably dealt with one of the updates...but white dots you see, like little sparkles that are always in the same space...these are hot pixels (not stuck (color), not dead (black)). They occur when the pixel is giving a constant current/voltage output always at 100%, regardless of the photons it catches. From what I've read every camera has them and they are very common especially with cheap small sensors, but they are usually mapped out and camouflaged by pixel interpolation so that they do not bother you on your brand new Canon or Nikon or even high end smart phone. Since the primary purpose of Tesla cams is for the car to the road and it's surrounding, Tesla did not bother much to map the hot spots - and nitpicking people like myself, who only want perfection, are now obsessing over this
From what I've read from other users who even own multiple Teslas, we all have them at night, when the ISO is cranked up, longer exposure makes the camera hotter and hot pixels are more likely to appear. They tend to come and go or always stay...
With the normal daylight they are not present due to lower ISO.
Front cam an side repeaters are of a similar quality but I can also relate that the back cam is different, somewhat better then the rest.

 

[moa999]

I was also expecting too much from the tesla cam quality. I

You bumped an old thread there.

But basically TeslaCam/Sentry was an afterthought, I believe prompted by a Tweet to Elon, and despite improvements it still shows.

The cameras are designed for the Autopilot system (eg red color shift, and lack of pixel correction, or filters at night)

Sentry while Parked also uses way more power than it should - as it needs to run the powerful HW3/FSD computer. Ideally when parked it could hand over the limited monitoring and recording to the Atom/Ryzen chip or run in low power mode (if it had one).
Maybe we might see some changes in the rumoured HW4 and new Samsung/LG 5MP cameras coming soon.

Finally, in the output Tesla loses a branding trick vs the many other dashcams you see on YT channels - that stamp their logo, and often speed, or GPS data on the screen.