# Sentry Mode Event Report - how is this to be used?



## NYer (Dec 11, 2018)

I've been using Sentry Mode quite a bit, and often find upon return to my Model 3 that the car has an alert, "Sentry Mode event report." However, it provides no insights or information. If I click on it, nothing happens. The "i" which implies more information is passive and does nothing.

Am I supposed to yank out the USB and spend my evening scrolling through video files to figure out what the heck happened? I appreciate any insights into how to use these "event reports."


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## iChris93 (Feb 3, 2017)

NYer said:


> Am I supposed to yank out the USB and spend my evening scrolling through video files to figure out what the heck happened?


At this point, I think that is what you would have to do.


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## NYer (Dec 11, 2018)

iChris93 said:


> At this point, I think that is what you would have to do.


Wow - that is not very useful. They have to be working on making the videos tagged and viewable by the mobile app. The new macs don't even come with USB connectors.


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## iChris93 (Feb 3, 2017)

NYer said:


> The new macs don't even come with USB connectors.


You can get one of these


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Correct. It is telling you there has been one even that triggered a recording. This could be a person walking by, someone maybe truly bumped the car, or as I saw on Facebook an F15 flying overhead, but it simply means one event of some sort caused a recording to happen, even though likely no one touched your car. 

You then get to take a look through the video, but you can easily look at the date and time in the directory names and select teh most recent ones.

Several members here have also created utilties that will combine the video from all 3 cameras into one view and will also speed them up. This also gives you an opportunity to clean up and delete all of the history you don't need so that you'll have room to record an event you likely might need.


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

NYer said:


> Wow - that is not very useful. They have to be working on making the videos tagged and viewable by the mobile app. The new macs don't even come with USB connectors.


Keep in mind this is all in it's infancy. This has saved you from buying a dedicated Dashcam, and to put it in the cloud or viewable from the app will cost them more money for LTE. They are trying to find the happy medium to deliver a nice service at a reasonable/minimal cost.

Take a look at your car and if it hasn't been damaged or hurt then maybe no need to review the video at all. It's your call.


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## NYer (Dec 11, 2018)

iChris93 said:


> You can get one of these


Thank you. Hadn't seen one of those.


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## NYer (Dec 11, 2018)

GDN said:


> Keep in mind this is all in it's infancy. This has saved you from buying a dedicated Dashcam, and to put it in the cloud or viewable from the app will cost them more money for LTE. They are trying to find the happy medium to deliver a nice service at a reasonable/minimal cost.
> 
> Take a look at your car and if it hasn't been damaged or hurt then maybe no need to review the video at all. It's your call.


Yeah, that's what I've been doing. I see an alert, walk around, see nothing, and assume that some guy or car walked or drove past my car and triggered something.


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## turnem (Apr 26, 2019)

So far it has captured me walking up to the car every time and called it an alert. You'd think it would ignore that one after I unlock the car but I suppose I'd rather them error on the safe side versus potentially not recording something that the car should have.


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## MJJ (Aug 7, 2016)

I think the release notes implied that in case of an actual police-reportable (And Sentry-captured) event Tesla would be able to recover video from on board.


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## upscaleman (Apr 27, 2019)

You could always reverse the process - check for damage first, then check your sentry logs if you notice any. 

Who cares about the alerts if they don't actually lead to something?

Car damaged? No.
Car broken into? No.

Don't bother with the logs.


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## SR22pilot (Aug 16, 2018)

Someone sees your car. Says "Hey Dad, it's a Tesla. Look how cool it is inside." Boom, you have an event.


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## Achooo (Oct 20, 2018)

upscaleman said:


> You could always reverse the process - check for damage first, then check your sentry logs if you notice any.
> 
> Who cares about the alerts if they don't actually lead to something?
> 
> ...


This has been my protocol the last couple days since the alerts started. I have to say, it does slow the down the entire process of getting in the car and driving away.


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## NR4P (Jul 14, 2018)

Had a sentry alarm show up on my phone while parked at the golf course. First alarm I ever had so went to the car to check it. Nada. 
Later on looked at the videos and found it was a person walking by the car with golf clubs. 

And there were 5 other events, but only the one alarm.

Thus far it is a bit of crying wolf but as I have seen others with real issues and Sentry has come to their rescue, I am looking forward to it improving over time.


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## EValuatED (Apr 29, 2017)

NR4P said:


> Had a sentry alarm show up on my phone while parked at the golf course. First alarm I ever had so went to the car to check it. Nada.
> Later on looked at the videos and found it was a person walking by the car with golf clubs.
> 
> And there were 5 other events, but only the one alarm.
> ...


Just had a similar thing yesterday afternoon at a trade show. Got an alarm notice on my phone so went to the garage. Couldn't see anything amiss. Looked at the videos and could see one set where the alarm was going off (flashing lights showing on the garage walls) but really couldn't tell what set it off. I didn't notice anything unusual in the videos right around the time of the alarm event with people or cars moving right next to me. Front cam showed a vehicle had gone by close to the time of the alarm... maybe shook the floor? Didn't see any damage when I walked around my car. So I moved the car to not have a repeat (if it was vibration). Didn't happen again though I did see more Sentry alerts from motion in the garage when I came back later. BTW the alarm was off in the next video (and was off when I walked up to my car).


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## CleanEV (May 17, 2018)

NYer said:


> Wow - that is not very useful. They have to be working on making the videos tagged and viewable by the mobile app. The new macs don't even come with USB connectors.


If you do not want to yank out USB every time, invest in Raspberry Pi Zero W and follow this from github - https://github.com/marcone/teslausb


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## Michael Russo (Oct 15, 2016)

I still feel it would be useful to be able to access a log with a brief description of the event without having to consult the USB stick, IMHO. Maybe in a future update?


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## SR22pilot (Aug 16, 2018)

Michael Russo said:


> I still feel it would be useful to be able to access a log with a brief description of the event without having to consult the USB stick, IMHO. Maybe in a future update?


I guess a date and time stamp would be useful. Otherwise the most you could probably get would be something along the lines of "Ultrasonic sensor 7 triggered by nearby movement."


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## BluestarE3 (Oct 12, 2017)

Michael Russo said:


> I still feel it would be useful to be able to access a log with a brief description of the event without having to consult the USB stick, IMHO. Maybe in a future update?


I'm not sure what type of succinct description would be useful since any number of nearby moving objects or people could trigger an alert state. It wouldn't know if the person walking next to your car is merely getting into his own vehicle parked next to yours or if he's keying your car (as captured in a recently posted Sentry Mode video). The ultimate solution would be to have the videos from the current session available for review and deletion on the car's own touchscreen. That would be a great future enhancement of this function.


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## GateFather (Nov 1, 2018)

The last couple of days at work I’ve gotten in my car at the end of the day and I have an alert that says something like “Sentry Mode Event”. I can’t seem to find it on the USB and even if I could it would be like a needle in a haystack with all the videos. How do guys find the video the alert is referencing?


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## slasher016 (Sep 12, 2017)

From my experience there is no great way. And event is a very vague thing from what I can tell. I had three events the other day, and all three the best I could determine was that people walked too closely to my car for her liking.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

SR22pilot said:


> I guess a date and time stamp would be useful. Otherwise the most you could probably get would be something along the lines of "Ultrasonic sensor 7 triggered by nearby movement."


it only is activated by 3 cameras (currently).... so even easier to ID where the alert started from.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

GateFather said:


> The last couple of days at work I've gotten in my car at the end of the day and I have an alert that says something like "Sentry Mode Event". I can't seem to find it on the USB and even if I could it would be like a needle in a haystack with all the videos. How do guys find the video the alert is referencing?


any time an event (set of 10 1minute videos) is triggered, most times the actual trigger is in the 9th minute. If you are somewhere that shows the headlight illumination, you will be able to see the lights flash. If the trigger was you returning to the car, it will be the last minute of the set.


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I'm finding that the number of events reported on the screen is usually just someone has walked by or another vehicle has just driven by. The "events" reported there just caused a recording to take place. Luckily enough I have not had the alarm go off yet. That is what would cause alarm to truly search video you have saved on the drive. These are also the events that will send a notification to your phone. A standard recording of someone getting too close will not send an alert to your phone.

To the original question however, I am using the Mac tool created by @ehendrix23 in this thread - https://teslaownersonline.com/threads/dashcam-video-script.11481/post-208202 and using a Mac Automator created by @atomitod and shared in this thread - https://teslaownersonline.com/threads/macos-automator-workflow-for-dash-cam-script.12036/post-219550

I then watch the combined video of all cameras in 10x speed for any thing that might have happened around the car.

Note - I don't watch all videos any more since most just show people walking by the car, but I don't delete them until I've taken a quick glance at the car to make sure nothing is wrong either.


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## AugustaDriver (Jul 21, 2017)

I've also noted that the vibration sensor can be triggered by loud motorcycles. I parked on a corner, and since it was a motorcycle gathering I came back to the alarm being triggered once and 31 separate events recorded on the file. I first checked the car for damage due to the alarm, but in reviewing the 90+ videos (all three cameras) I found my offender (by watching the reflection of the headlights in the bumper of the car parked in front of me) and their unruffled exhaust pipes clearly set off the alarm similar to the F-15 incident


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## darthbenji (Oct 24, 2018)

Anyone that’s had the alarm actually go off, how long will it go for and how do you turn it off?


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## BluestarE3 (Oct 12, 2017)

GateFather said:


> The last couple of days at work I've gotten in my car at the end of the day and I have an alert that says something like "Sentry Mode Event". I can't seem to find it on the USB and even if I could it would be like a needle in a haystack with all the videos. How do guys find the video the alert is referencing?


The SavedClips folder contains subfolders named with the timestamp of the event. Within a subfolder, there are up to 10-11 sets of 1 minute videos captured by the front, left-repeater and right-repeater cameras. The notification message on your screen should indicate the number of alert events triggered in the current Sentry Mode session, so you can use that as a guide for the number of subfolders to review, starting with the latest and working backwards in time.

Depending on how long you were parked with Sentry Mode enabled and how much activity there is nearby your parking space, you could have a few or a great number of events captured. My suggestion is that if you see an alert notification pop-up when you return to your car, do a quick walk-around the outside to look for any visible damage (smashed window, door ding, keying, graffiti, etc.). If you don't see anything unusual, then most likely those alert events were triggered by incidental activity (someone or something passing nearby the front or side of your car) and can be ignored. If you do see damage, then spend the time to retrieve and review the files.


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## IPv6Freely (Aug 8, 2017)

CleanEV said:


> If you do not want to yank out USB every time, invest in Raspberry Pi Zero W and follow this from github - https://github.com/marcone/teslausb


Thank you for this! Looks super easy. May fork it and make some changes


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## SR22pilot (Aug 16, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> it only is activated by 3 cameras (currently).... so even easier to ID where the alert started from.


I don't think this is correct. It records three cameras but I thought the ultrasonic sensors were used to detect people nearby. I could be wrong and perhaps it is video motion detection but I didn't think so.


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## AugustaDriver (Jul 21, 2017)

darthbenji said:


> Anyone that's had the alarm actually go off, how long will it go for and how do you turn it off?


Looking back at the video and how long the lights flashed in the reflection it was 20-30 seconds. Probably long enough to get through the song but not so as to become annoying if it accidently goes off.


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## turnem (Apr 26, 2019)

CleanEV said:


> If you do not want to yank out USB every time, invest in Raspberry Pi Zero W and follow this from github - https://github.com/marcone/teslausb


I've been looking into this. This is an awesome idea and would work perfectly for me as I could just sync the files to my NAS everyday.

But as I started looking into it - it seems that folks are having issues with the latest Tesla software versions. Are you successfully using this? What software version are you on?


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## Lady Sprite Blue (Mar 10, 2019)

Yikes. I agree with all that’s being said on this thread. Love the idea of Sentry Mode but using it is crude at best. I, too, have had alerts, searched the vids, looked the car over, and plugged the USB drive back in. Nice to know i’m In good company.


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## Mistersandman (Sep 23, 2017)

This also works quite well if you have an iPhone: SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive 64GB...


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## webdriverguy (May 25, 2017)

iChris93 said:


> You can get one of these


Is this reliable? From reviews it seems that it has slow write speeds. You need a drive/ card that support multiple writes in order to reliably record.


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## BluestarE3 (Oct 12, 2017)

webdriverguy said:


> Is this reliable? From reviews it seems that it has slow write speeds. You need a drive/ card that support multiple writes in order to reliably record.


Additionally, may want to check out this thread starting at this post:
https://teslaownersonline.com/threa...ues-formatting-partitioning.11828/post-233217


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

Mistersandman said:


> This also works quite well if you have an iPhone: SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive 64GB...


in the USB thread, many people have reported having issues with this usb stick, if over 32GB, or not having a 32GB partition... OR having issues accessing the files thru Sandisk's iPhone app.


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## iChris93 (Feb 3, 2017)

webdriverguy said:


> Is this reliable? From reviews it seems that it has slow write speeds. You need a drive/ card that support multiple writes in order to reliably record.


I have one I use for other purposes, have not tried it for my dash cam usb.


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## iChris93 (Feb 3, 2017)

BluestarE3 said:


> Additionally, may want to check out this thread starting at this post:
> https://teslaownersonline.com/threa...ues-formatting-partitioning.11828/post-233217


That's not the same drive.


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## Mistersandman (Sep 23, 2017)

webdriverguy said:


> Is this reliable? From reviews it seems that it has slow write speeds. You need a drive/ card that support multiple writes in order to reliably record.


Prior to the last firmware update it was working great. No problems at all. But with the recent update I've been getting some blank files just like everyone else has been complaining about. I don't think the blank files are usb drive related.


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## BluestarE3 (Oct 12, 2017)

iChris93 said:


> That's not the same drive.


Sorry, I meant to reply to the post one above, which referred to the iXpand.


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## Greg Appelt (Sep 27, 2018)

darthbenji said:


> Anyone that's had the alarm actually go off, how long will it go for and how do you turn it off?


I purposely was showing off the Sentry Mode to some friends. Set SM to on, get out of car, lock via app, turn off BlueTooth on phone. Pound on rear door frame with open palm.... Tesla 'Hal' will appear first, then horn honking and loud music (interior). To turn it off either use your card/key on the B pillar, or turn bluetooth back on the phone and select Unlock from the Tesla app.


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