Continuous Dashcam Recording

[CG Cowboy]

Just took delivery a few days ago. After a few short trips around town, I noticed my trips were being recorded. I have Sentry mode turned off and it stays off. But the status stays on "Recording". If I press it, it quickly saves footage and starts recording again.

I turned the truck completely off then on again. And it goes back to recording. I don't yet have a USB attached yet it recorded an hour of driving and even the time I had stepped away from the truck for a while. Am I missing something?

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[Ddanis60]

The vehicle comes with a thumb drive in the glove box. Pull it out if you don’t want the vehicle to record.

you may have turned sentry mode off, but that is different that what you’re describing. What you have recording is the “dashcam” function. Sentry records when you’re away and the vehicle is locked. If you look under your recordings, you’ll see three folders. Sentry, dashcam, and I think saved.

 

[AlmostHuman]

I don’t remember when this started but some time ago they made it so dashcam footage is stored on internal memory if you don’t have a USB drive attached.

 

[CG Cowboy]

Thank you for the quick replies. The difference between Sentry and dashcam makes sense. And I'm not worried about unwanted footage as much as I'm worries about sucking up battery unnecessarily. Could it be that sitting in the cab triggers dashcam recording? I just don't want it recording unless Ssentry is triggered.

 

[Ddanis60]

The only way sentry is triggered is by having sentry turned on. The reason this uses so much battery is because to doesn’t allow the truck to “sleep” as it keeps everything aware and ready to record. The battery usage for dashcam is negligible because the vehicle is obviously awake as it’s driving around or actively open. If you’re having phantom energy loss, you can check out the energy app in the vehicle and see how much the other systems are using.

I was not aware that the vehicle would
Record dashcam without a thumb drive. I’ve had a model 3 since before the update that added dashcam and sentry was released in 2019. This is the first I’ve heard of internal storage accessible by the user. Especially because all teslas shipped since around 2021 have included a drive for sentry and dashcam.

 

[rudedawg78]

I noticed my dashcam is always recording, however, I don't see it on my dashcam saved footage unless I push the recording button and then it saves it to my drive. I don't believe that every drive of yours is saved, unless you push the "recording" button.

 

[rudedawg78]

Here are the dashcam options you can pick from and what they do:

 

[CG Cowboy]

You guys are awesome! It sounds like it is always in "recording" mode when ON but won't save unless triggered by an event or manually. So I was pushing the recording button to turn it off but was actually forcing it to save footage. I also honked at another driver as a greeting because they were waving as I went by. That ended up being 51 mins of footage. I didn't even know it could store that much without adding a USB drive (if that's even an option anymore). Thanks, everyone!

 

[JohnnyDadBod]

The cameras are rolling all the time whether you are recording or not. Dashcam doesn't use up any more battery while driving because the system is already processing 7 cameras simultaneously.

 

[REM]

Thank you for the quick replies. The difference between Sentry and dashcam makes sense. And I'm not worried about unwanted footage as much as I'm worries about sucking up battery unnecessarily. Could it be that sitting in the cab triggers dashcam recording? I just don't want it recording unless Ssentry is triggered.

You will want to keep your dashcam on at all times, it has saved people tons of time, money, and litigation. There will be zero discernible battery loss from it.

 

[AlmostHuman]

I went looking for the documentation showing that it saves dashcam footage internally. I cannot find it but I thought for sure I remember reading some release notes in a firmware update over the last two years that said dashcam footage was saved for something like 10 minutes on internal storage even if you didn’t have a USD storage device in the vehicle. Anyone remember this? Did I dream this?

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