# Sentry Mode power draw test



## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

My car is parked at the airport for a 2-day trip with sentry mode on. I'll update power usage at 6, 12, 24, and 36 hours. Started at 75%, first two data points:













After 6 hrs down total of 3%


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## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

12 hours in, down 5%


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## eXntrc (Jan 14, 2019)

Dogwhistle said:


> After 6 hrs down total of 3%


Ouch. 12% a day? Good thing you're only gone two days! I'm pretty sure it shuts down Sentry mode when the battery drops below a certain threshold, but I hope you've got plenty of range to get you back home.

Thank you for including us in your experiment!


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## eXntrc (Jan 14, 2019)

Dogwhistle said:


> 12 hours in, down 5%


Whoops. You posted at the same time as I was. Looks like it shaved off an additional 1% for the second 6 hours. I wonder how much the power consumption changes based on the environment. E.g. I wonder if it doesn't use power to process frames if it's not detecting any motion or if it's too dark to see anything.

Will be interested to see where this goes. Thanks again!


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## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

No worries, I’ve got plenty of juice for my 45 mile drive home. Since I can control it from the app, I can also turn it off if I feel the need. Also have a supercharger halfway home as well. I’m not scared, yet!


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## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

The good news is...the App is VERY responsive!!


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Dogwhistle said:


> The good news is...the App is VERY responsive!!


Is this likely because the car isn't sleeping due to sentry mode? Next will be to see it without sentry on and let the car go to sleep.

And I will clarify - when you say responsive do you likely mean, by opening the app it immediately connects to the car?


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## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

GDN said:


> Is this likely because the car isn't sleeping due to sentry mode? Next will be to see it without sentry on and let the car go to sleep.
> 
> And I will clarify - when you say responsive do you likely mean, by opening the app it immediately connects to the car?


Yes, that is what I mean. It is obviously not sleeping at all in sentry mode, and TeslaFi verifies it is constantly in an "idling" state.
So sentry mode puts the car into a worst case vampire draw state (without preconditioning), so we'll see where that leaves me after 36 hours.


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## eXntrc (Jan 14, 2019)

Dogwhistle said:


> Since I can control it from the app, I can also turn it off if I feel the need. Also have a supercharger halfway home as well. I'm not scared, yet!


Oh good! You definitely sound covered. 



Dogwhistle said:


> So sentry mode puts the car into a worst case vampire draw state (without preconditioning)


I've seen conditioning / preconditioning mentioned a few times now and I see conditioning on TeslaFi, but I've never seen this explained. Can someone help me understand what conditioning is?


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## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

eXntrc said:


> Can someone help me understand what conditioning is?


It's just having the heater or ac on while you're not driving. I believe people most often refer to it as pre-conditioning when they set it remotely from the app prior to a drive. In Teslafi it will also show up as conditioning if someone is sitting in the car with the fan on, while parked of course.


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## eXntrc (Jan 14, 2019)

Ahhhh. Thank you so much @Bigriver!


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## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

24 hours of sentry = 10% loss of SOC


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## Love (Sep 13, 2017)

Thank you for documenting this @Dogwhistle. Appreciate your efforts! I know that some might think 10% over 24 hours sounds like a lot but I kind of think that isn't too bad... considering my idea of Sentry Mode usage would be about 3-4 hours at a time tops. I can see using it while I'm parked downtown for dinner/a night out, so the extra draw so far isn't scaring me away.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Lovesword said:


> I know that some might think 10% over 24 hours sounds like a lot but I kind of think that isn't too bad...


I just have to say that this is one area where Nissan was leaps and bounds ahead of Tesla.

The Leaf exhibits hardly any "phantom drain" at all. Nissan engineers spent a lot of time reducing those parasitic losses to almost nothing. Of course, the remote app is much less feature-rich because of this. I can't recall there ever being a thread at the Nissan Leaf forum where people discussed their car-off power draw. So, kudos to Nissan for nailing that particular issue from the onset.


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## Darrenf (Apr 5, 2016)

garsh said:


> I just have to say that this is one area where Nissan was leaps and bounds ahead of Tesla.
> 
> The Leaf exhibits hardly any "phantom drain" at all. Nissan engineers spent a lot of time reducing those parasitic losses to almost nothing. Of course, the remote app is much less feature-rich because of this. I can't recall there ever being a thread at the Nissan Leaf forum where people discussed their car-off power draw. So, kudos to Nissan for nailing that particular issue from the onset.


I'll take the phantom drain over the 6% battery capacity loss every year.


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## littlD (Apr 17, 2016)

Darrenf said:


> I'll take the phantom drain over the 6% battery capacity loss every year.


While that happened for many, not for everyone.

I had a 2015 Leaf for 3 1/2 years and still had 12 out of 12 bars battery health and just a few miles range loss.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

Problem is you can’t differentiate Model 3 random insomnia battery drain and Sentry mode drain. Some days it’s 0.5% others it 3% without Sentry mode. Until you can eliminate or predicate that the test is impossible. Unless Sentry mode is really bad, which expect it won’t be. 

Correction: If you’re in a warm climate you might not have insomnia issue. So where is the test being done?


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## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

I'm watching with interest. I agree with @mswlogo that you'd be having some phantom drain any way. I see the inside temp is 37 F and am perplexed why the battery isn't showing any snowflake. But any way I stack it up, you are having at least double the loss with sentry mode on.

But even if it is 10% SOC over 24 hours, that is roughly 7 kWh, which is a cost of roughly $1 at my electric rate. Sure, I'd pay $1 to have someone watch over my car for 24 hours while at the airport. But on the other hand, does it make sense to be using an average of about 300 W? In the days of incandescent light bulbs, that didn't sound so high, but It kind of does now.


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## LUXMAN (Apr 4, 2016)

littlD said:


> While that happened for many, not for everyone.
> 
> I had a 2015 Leaf for 3 1/2 years and still had 12 out of 12 bars battery health and just a few miles range loss.


Many here in Texas and other hot states did though. I still have my 2015 and it just hit 48k miles. I am one month short of 4 years and using LEAFSPY, it shows 82.2% of original capacity. So 4.5% per year...but that isn't fair either. I kept records and it did extremely well for the first 1.5 years and 19000 miles, then it plummeted. I now have a useful range of 62 miles and that is my RT commute. I am at 13000 miles on the 3 and ZERO lose. I will compare her to the LEAF as she ages but I think we all know how that will go 










Back to the topic of drain, the vampire drain that I documented here when I got RUBY in March of 2018 has essentially disappeared. So I think Tesla has that figured out. But as far as Sentry Mode, it is going to keep the car awake so I am sure we will see somewhere around 8-10% a day. Awaiting @Dogwhistle next update.


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## raptor (May 6, 2018)

I'm surprised how many people are bothered by the 10% drain, it's a bargain IMHO. Are that many people driving over 200 miles a day?



littlD said:


> While that happened for many, not for everyone.
> 
> I had a 2015 Leaf for 3 1/2 years and still had 12 out of 12 bars battery health and just a few miles range loss.


By the time it drops to 11 bars, you've lost 15%.


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## SR22pilot (Aug 16, 2018)

garsh said:


> I just have to say that this is one area where Nissan was leaps and bounds ahead of Tesla.
> 
> The Leaf exhibits hardly any "phantom drain" at all. Nissan engineers spent a lot of time reducing those parasitic losses to almost nothing. Of course, the remote app is much less feature-rich because of this. I can't recall there ever being a thread at the Nissan Leaf forum where people discussed their car-off power draw. So, kudos to Nissan for nailing that particular issue from the onset.


But this thread isn't about phantom drain. It is about Sentry Mode which leaves the car powered up. When the Leaf is monitoring a suite of external cameras and ultrasonic sensor then we can talk about how the Leaf compares.


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## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

mswlogo said:


> Correction: If you're in a warm climate you might not have insomnia issue. So where is the test being done?


Philadelphia airport, outside.


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## PaulK (Oct 2, 2017)

mswlogo said:


> Problem is you can't differentiate Model 3 random insomnia battery drain and Sentry mode drain. Some days it's 0.5% others it 3% without Sentry mode. Until you can eliminate or predicate that the test is impossible. Unless Sentry mode is really bad, which expect it won't be.
> 
> Correction: If you're in a warm climate you might not have insomnia issue. So where is the test being done?


I think this is a good test. Presumably, Sentry mode means the car isn't sleeping - so "insomnia battery drain", as you put it, should be at its worst in this mode. Plus in Philadelphia right now the temperatures are just either side of freezing all the time, so this really should be a good, general "worst case" drain rate.

The sample size is too small to draw any conclusions, but I will anyway  10% in 24 hours = 31 miles. This is just a bit over 1 mile per hour. If we presume that Sentry mode enabled is just a small percentage worse than "random insomnia" then it validates those who have observed (me included) their Model 3 lose 7 miles overnight. Nights the car loses that much range, it probably slept very little (or not at all).

Thanks, Dogwhistle for doing this test.

Earlier I parked in my garage and won't be using my Model 3 for more than 24 hours, so I'll do a test over the next 24 hours also. It's in my ~55 degree F garage. 12 Noon, 176 miles range, unplugged. Sentry mode activated. I'll post a follow up tonight and tomorrow at noon.


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

Thanks for doing this test @Dogwhistle ! The ~10% a day is about the same as the car never going to sleep, which we know is occurring here. So no real additional power draw for the camera analysis. Though blasting the stereo at 11 for a few hours might be a bit worse


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## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

One final data point from my totally unscientific anecdotal test.







So that's a total loss of 16% SOC over a period of 36.5 hours with Sentry mode running continuously.
However, I noticed up return to my car, that the Dashcam had faulted at some point with the grey X, so the fact it wasn't recording the whole time may have affected the results. I haven't had a chance to pull the tapes yet to review when that happened, but will let you know. Also, after several months of perfect operation, I've had two thumb drives go corrupt in the last 3 days with 5.4. Will reformat and try again.


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## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

So figured out why the drive went grey X on me. The last file recorded was 26 hours into my test. At that point, my little 8GB drive had filled up. One hour of recent data, plus 5 10-minute alert saves did the trick. The drive worked great for the old system, but looks like I might actually just have to spend $10 and get a new one instead of just pulling an old one out of the desk!


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## PaulK (Oct 2, 2017)

Update on my "inside garage 55 degree F sentry mode on" test.

It's been 10 hours and battery now reads 169 mi. This is a loss of 7 miles in 10 hours (0.7mi/hr). I'll do a final check tomorrow at Noon which will be 24 hours and will post here.

Dogwhistle, you had a loss of 1.3 mi/hr consistently over your test. If my drain rate remains constant we can probably attribute the difference to be the fact that yours was parked outside in a ~25 degree F colder environment (or, possibly your sentry had to light up the display/flash the headlights sometimes as people walked by).

In any event, I agree with JWardell that the drain rate with Sentry mode on isn't much or any worse than the car simply staying awake. I do wish there was a way to command the car to "deep sleep" until we intentionally wake it from the app or at the car with a card.


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## PaulK (Oct 2, 2017)

Oh, it's also cool how the car immediately reacts to the app while Sentry mode is on. When I'm out at a restaurant or shopping and know that I'll want to preheat or precool the car later - I'll use Sentry mode so I know I'll get an instant response once I'm ready to activate it


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

PaulK said:


> I do wish there was a way to command the car to "deep sleep" until we intentionally wake it from the app or at the car with a card.


But that is exactly how the car normally operates if there is no app or service keeping it awake. It will go to sleep within minutes.



PaulK said:


> Oh, it's also cool how the car immediately reacts to the app while Sentry mode is on. When I'm out at a restaurant or shopping and know that I'll want to preheat or precool the car later - I'll use Sentry mode so I know I'll get an instant response once I'm ready to activate it


And that is just a result of the car's insomnia. When it's awake, the app is always immediately responsive.

Maybe it would be nice to have a small low power controller on the cell receiver so it can always stay powered and responsive while the main systems are shut down and saving battery


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

JWardell said:


> Maybe it would be nice to have a small low power controller on the cell receiver so it can always stay powered and responsive while the main systems are shut down and saving battery


THIS would be fantastic. my car is still on 50.6, but since the last app update, it can not wake the car up. Hopefully, just a symptom of having the new app and old FW not playing well together, but annoying after being used to pre-heating when leaving work for the day and only now able by going thru Teslafi.


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## PaulK (Oct 2, 2017)

JWardell said:


> But that is exactly how the car normally operates if there is no app or service keeping it awake. It will go to sleep within minutes.
> 
> And that is just a result of the car's insomnia. When it's awake, the app is always immediately responsive.
> 
> Maybe it would be nice to have a small low power controller on the cell receiver so it can always stay powered and responsive while the main systems are shut down and saving battery


I guess it seems to me that the car sometimes sleeps less than others. I don't have a regular commute so some weeks I drive only 20-30 miles/day and then I don't plug in for several days at a time. Some nights the car loses only 1-2 miles - sometimes 7! The temperature in my garage doesn't vary much.

I suppose the variability could be battery conditioning unrelated to "sleep" as we are discussing here.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

Bigriver said:


> I'm watching with interest. I agree with @mswlogo that you'd be having some phantom drain any way. I see the inside temp is 37 F and am perplexed why the battery isn't showing any snowflake. But any way I stack it up, you are having at least double the loss with sentry mode on.
> 
> But even if it is 10% SOC over 24 hours, that is roughly 7 kWh, which is a cost of roughly $1 at my electric rate. Sure, I'd pay $1 to have someone watch over my car for 24 hours while at the airport. But on the other hand, does it make sense to be using an average of about 300 W? In the days of incandescent light bulbs, that didn't sound so high, but It kind of does now.


In my head I try to separate "Phantom Drain" loss from "Insomnia" loss. In my head Phantom loss is very low and very acceptable. It's the "Insomnia" on top of things that really messes things up and can make a measurement like this difficult.

I'd be curious how "deep" asleep it goes with the Sentry mode on. Are the "pumps/fans" running the whole time like it does when it does not "sleep" (like the 6 hour charge port massage thing does).

Also the Snow Flake thing really has me baffled lately. I've had the car overnight in 25F, with 90% limited regen by morning and no snow flake, and 37F out and 20% limited regen and have a snow flake.

All I can think of is, the Snow Flake depends on Temperature AND SOC. It seems more prone to put up a Snow Flake when the SOC is lower.


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## Nautilus (Oct 10, 2018)

Dogwhistle said:


> So figured out why the drive went grey X on me. The last file recorded was 26 hours into my test. At that point, my little 8GB drive had filled up. One hour of recent data, plus 5 10-minute alert saves did the trick. The drive worked great for the old system, but looks like I might actually just have to spend $10 and get a new one instead of just pulling an old one out of the desk!


First, like everyone else, thank you for conducting this experiment and sharing the results. For me there are two key take-aways (in addition to the power drain findings):

I will also need to get a bigger drive (I currently have 8GB), since it records and saves 10 minutes x 3 cameras x ~29MB/file (I think?) of data each time there's an alert (not, apparently just an alarm). That's about 870MB per alert, and the drive could fill up quickly. When the remaining 3 outside cameras are added to the mix (which I'm sure they will be at some point), we're then up to 1.7GB/alert or driving incident. 
It is important to remember to periodically remove the drive and delete some of the older files, to ensure there's always 870kb available to capture the next incident which inevitably will be the one that really needed to be saved.
Perhaps at some time in the future, a firmware update will allow review of the memory drive's contents on the car screen and also deletion of files as desired.


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## PaulK (Oct 2, 2017)

The 12:00 Noon conclusion to my 24 hour "inside 55 degree garage" test:

159 miles range. Lost 17 miles (5.4%) in 24 hours. This is = 0.7 mph. Exactly consistent with the first 10 hours. This is about half of Dogwhistle,'s loss (which was parked at about freezing temps and subject to occasional camera recordings).

So we maybe now have a best and worst case drain rate.

Well, mine still isn't best case... since with Sentry mode "on" the 12v power port remains on, my V1 radar detector was on the whole 24 hours. I don't imagine it uses a significant amount of power but it was an additional small drain.


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## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

mswlogo said:


> Also the Snow Flake thing really has me baffled lately. I've had the car overnight in 25F, with 90% limited regen by morning and no snow flake, and 37F out and 20% limited regen and have a snow flake.
> 
> All I can think of is, the Snow Flake depends on Temperature AND SOC. It seems more prone to put up a Snow Flake when the SOC is lower.


I've only occasionally made notes to myself about snowflakes, so it's somewhat hard to later pin down when later looking at Teslafi data. However, tonight I did notice that in the Teslafi raw data feed, there is both a battery level and usable battery level. When I've noted a snowflake, the difference in these 2 Teslafi numbers is 5% SOC. There have also been a few times when I was surprised that there was no snowflake both because of the temperature and because the loss seemed higher than expected. Now that I look at the Teslafi raw data, I see that the usable battery level was 2% SOC lower than the battery level for both of those situations.

For my handful of data points I have in front of me, two of them seem to confirm what you say that more of the battery is snowflaked at a lower SOC. There are 2 times that it was 26 F and the car was outside for about 8 hours each, and when it was at 43% SOC it went down to 38% (with snowflake) and when it was 64%, there was no snowflake (but Teslafi raw data shows usable battery was only 62%).

Anybody know the physics behind the snowflake and why a lower SOC would have more of the battery temporarily lost to the cold? It would be more convenient if that worked backwards.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

PaulK said:


> The 12:00 Noon conclusion to my 24 hour "inside 55 degree garage" test:
> 
> 159 miles range. Lost 17 miles (5.4%) in 24 hours. This is = 0.7 mph. Exactly consistent with the first 10 hours. This is about half of Dogwhistle,'s loss (which was parked at about freezing temps and subject to occasional camera recordings).
> 
> ...


I expect that you half loss vs @Dogwhistle has more to do with lack of picked up motion a garage has vs an airport parking lot than the temperature


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## zosoisnotaword (Aug 28, 2017)

PaulK said:


> The 12:00 Noon conclusion to my 24 hour "inside 55 degree garage" test:
> 
> 159 miles range. Lost 17 miles (5.4%) in 24 hours. This is = 0.7 mph. Exactly consistent with the first 10 hours. This is about half of Dogwhistle,'s loss (which was parked at about freezing temps and subject to occasional camera recordings).
> 
> ...


Thanks for the test. I have a V1 too; it draws about 3W (conservatively) on standby, and a little over 5W for a full alert. So in your garage I imagine it was a consistent 2.5-3W drain. So as you suspected, not much of a factor on your test (.1%).


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## Long Ranger (Jun 1, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> I expect that you half loss vs @Dogwhistle has more to do with lack of picked up motion a garage has vs an airport parking lot than the temperature


But it seems odd to me that the motion would make much difference either. The car is continuously awake and always recording video when in Sentry mode, regardless of motion. Upon motion, it turns on the display, copies the recordings to a save folder, and maybe does a bit more processing in that state. I wouldn't expect that to result in significant difference in power consumption, especially when averaged over 24 hours. Maybe there is something else happening upon motion that I'm missing, but I'm not seeing what would cause such a big difference.


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## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

MelindaV said:


> I expect that you half loss vs @Dogwhistle has more to do with lack of picked up motion a garage has vs an airport parking lot than the temperature


I would be surprised if the 5 "hits" i received in Sentry mode would make THAT much difference in power consumption, considering the car is fully awake either way. I think the low temps are definitely a factor, causing the SOC "guess-o-meter" to lower its estimate as it chills down. Again, I wasn't trying to do this in a controlled environment, I just wanted to see if sentry is something I could use when I routinely park outdoors for long periods.

On a side note, I would also see during previous airport stays, as it got colder, that my SOC would drop 5% or more with extended stays outside. This is even with TeslaFi confirming that my car remained in a sleep state the ENTIRE time. I think most of this loss was temperature related with regards to how SOC is calculated in a chilled battery, vs. actual power use while sleeping.


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## PaulK (Oct 2, 2017)

Dogwhistle said:


> I would be surprised if the 5 "hits" i received in Sentry mode would make THAT much difference in power consumption, considering the car is fully awake either way. I think the low temps are definitely a factor, causing the SOC "guess-o-meter" to lower its estimate as it chills down. Again, I wasn't trying to do this in a controlled environment, I just wanted to see if sentry is something I could use when I routinely park outdoors for long periods.
> 
> On a side note, I would also see during previous airport stays, as it got colder, that my SOC would drop 5% or more with extended stays outside. This is even with TeslaFi confirming that my car remained in a sleep state the ENTIRE time. I think most of this loss was temperature related with regards to how SOC is calculated in a chilled battery, vs. actual power use while sleeping.


This is a good follow-up. The 5% you would maybe "usually" lose in the cold plus the 5% I lost in Sentry mode/55 degrees = the 10% you had with both factors in play. I'll say it again, our sample size is too small to be conclusive, but in any event I think we can state that no one should be shy about enabling Sentry mode for a few days - factoring in a cost of 10% per day.

I've been sick and it's been raining, so I still haven't driven the car. In the subsequent 24 hours since turning off Sentry mode, my Model 3 lost only 1 mile. I wish the phantom/vampire drain was always this low.


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## gaM3changer (Dec 24, 2018)

I ran a test yesterday parked at work in gloomy Socal. I enabled sentry mode at 37% (114.1 mi). I checked on it a little over 8 hours later and it was down to 34% (105.92 mi). Total loss of 8.18 miles (~1mi/hr). Not too bad for the potential benefits.


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## PaulK (Oct 2, 2017)

gaM3changer said:


> I ran a test yesterday parked at work in gloomy Socal. I enabled sentry mode at 37% (114.1 mi). I checked on it a little over 8 hours later and it was down to 34% (105.92 mi). Total loss of 8.18 miles (~1mi/hr). Not too bad for the potential benefits.
> View attachment 22664
> View attachment 22665


Thanks for the data point. Very consistent.


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## Nautilus (Oct 10, 2018)

gaM3changer said:


> I ran a test yesterday parked at work in gloomy Socal. I enabled sentry mode at 37% (114.1 mi). I checked on it a little over 8 hours later and it was down to 34% (105.92 mi). Total loss of 8.18 miles (~1mi/hr). Not too bad for the potential benefits.
> View attachment 22664
> View attachment 22665


What app provided all that data? Just curious.


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## gaM3changer (Dec 24, 2018)

App is HTTP Request Shortcuts on Android. I use it to send cURL commands via the Tesla API. What you're seeing is the the full response from the "data_request/charge_state" API request.


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## Chip Douglas (Jan 3, 2019)

If I were to enable sentry while I park and go to work, how much drain would I expect to see after 10 hours?


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## FRC (Aug 4, 2018)

Chip Douglas said:


> If I were to enable sentry while I park and go to work, how much drain would I expect to see after 10 hours?


About 4%/12miles


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## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

Chip Douglas said:


> If I were to enable sentry while I park and go to work, how much drain would I expect to see after 10 hours?


See Dogwhistle's post here. He lost about 5% over the first 12 hours, and 16% over 36.5 hours. That's about 4.4% per 10 hours.

EDIT: What FRC said.


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## Chip Douglas (Jan 3, 2019)

Can the mode be enabled/disabled via app?


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## Nautilus (Oct 10, 2018)

Chip Douglas said:


> Can the mode be enabled/disabled via app?


Yes indeed. Go to the Controls section in your phone app.


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## Zoomit (Oct 29, 2017)

Chip Douglas said:


> Can the mode be enabled/disabled via app?


Yes


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

Dogwhistle said:


> View attachment 22468
> 
> 24 hours of sentry = 10% loss of SOC


How does that compare to a "normal" (pre sentry mode era) 24 hour period of being parked and not plugged in? (i. e. the "net" vampire drain cost for sentry mode?).


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

Long Ranger said:


> But it seems odd to me that the motion would make much difference either. The car is continuously awake and always recording video when in Sentry mode, regardless of motion. Upon motion, it turns on the display, copies the recordings to a save folder, and maybe does a bit more processing in that state. I wouldn't expect that to result in significant difference in power consumption, especially when averaged over 24 hours. Maybe there is something else happening upon motion that I'm missing, but I'm not seeing what would cause such a big difference.


Perhaps it live streams to the cloud when motion is detected?


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## justaute (Dec 15, 2018)

I often park at the airport for 3-4 days. Guess I should NOT turn on the Sentry mode, unless absolutely necessary.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

justaute said:


> I often park at the airport for 3-4 days. Guess I should NOT turn on the Sentry mode, unless absolutely necessary.


I just got sentry mode installed and configured tonight.
I'm planning on leaving my car at the airport for 3 days. I'll accept 10% loss per day for the extra security.


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## justaute (Dec 15, 2018)

garsh said:


> I just got sentry mode installed and configured tonight.
> I'm planning on leaving my car at the airport for 3 days. I'll accept 10% loss per day for the extra security.


I park at an off-airport lot, The Parking Spot, so perhaps better security...I think?


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## mt09 (Oct 25, 2018)

I just got 2019.5.15 last night and ran sentry mode today for ~8 hours with a loss of 13 miles (1.625mi loss/hr). Here's the data graphed out with outside and interior temperature as well. It was out in the sun so the interior really heated up.


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## suppressor (Mar 14, 2019)

@*mt09 Where is that graph from? Is that teslafi?*


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

I tried Sentry Mode last night and turned it off today. 

Now my car appears to be staying awake.........sent a bug report to Tesla.


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## SimonMatthews (Apr 20, 2018)

Mike said:


> I tried Sentry Mode last night and turned it off today.
> 
> Now my car appears to be staying awake.........sent a bug report to Tesla.


I think that I am seeing the same behavior. I notice that my car is responding to the App much faster and I just looked at the contents of the TeslaCam folder: there was about an hour's worth of video from the inside of my garage.


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

SimonMatthews said:


> I think that I am seeing the same behavior. I notice that my car is responding to the App much faster and I just looked at the contents of the TeslaCam folder: there was about an hour's worth of video from the inside of my garage.


Just checked my TeslaCam folder as well, same results. App also connected within two seconds just now.......

Did you send a bug report?


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## SimonMatthews (Apr 20, 2018)

Mike said:


> Just checked my TeslaCam folder as well, same results. App also connected within two seconds just now.......
> 
> Did you send a bug report?


I called customer service. They were not aware of any similar reports.


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## Nautilus (Oct 10, 2018)

Keep in mind that any time the car is not "sleeping" the 3 cameras are recording. There is typically a rolling 60 minutes of video on the USB from just prior to it being removed to one hour earlier, in the "Recent Recordings" folder, typically taking up just under 4GB. If Sentry mode is on it will save 10 minutes anytime something triggers it (like a person walking close to the car in a parking lot) to the Saved Recordings folder. Same of course if you save dashcam footage while driving.

@Mike I'm surprised you got garage recordings unless either it was within the last hour of when you removed the USB, or you had Sentry Mode activated in the Garage.


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

Nautilus said:


> Keep in mind that any time the car is not "sleeping" the 3 cameras are recording. There is typically a rolling 60 minutes of video on the USB from just prior to it being removed to one hour earlier, in the "Recent Recordings" folder, typically taking up just under 4GB. If Sentry mode is on it will save 10 minutes anytime something triggers it (like a person walking close to the car in a parking lot) to the Saved Recordings folder. Same of course if you save dashcam footage while driving.
> 
> @Mike I'm surprised you got garage recordings unless either it was within the last hour of when you removed the USB, or you had Sentry Mode activated in the Garage.


Sentry mode was tried, once, last Wednesday evening until Thursday morning.

Since then I have not used it.

I have also employed two hard resets using the off button on the UI, as well as two soft resets via the two finger salute.

When I pulled the USB stick Thursday evening just to see what 5.15 set things up as.......that's when I saw the latest hour was being recorded, with car off and parked, Sentry Mode off, etc.

My car will not go to sleep and I guess that's why the video keeps providing me with the hour immediately prior to pulling the stick.


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## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

I left Sentry Mode enabled while I was out of town for the Model Y event. Nestled between two large trucks for protection (  ), my car experienced the same ~1 mph drain others have reported. 

Initial SoC: 74%
Final SoC: 57%
Duration: 56 hours

--> 0.3% drain per hour =~ 1 mph

Later tonight I'll pull the USB drive and see how many "events" were recorded.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

I had a similar experience.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1106989958760448001


Bokonon said:


> I left Sentry Mode enabled while I was out of town for the Model Y event. Nestled between two large trucks for protection (  ), my car experienced the same ~1 mph drain others have reported.
> 
> Initial SoC: 74%
> Final SoC: 57%
> ...


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

here's my airport parking with Sentry experience.
parked Thursday at 5:13am with 243 miles of range
returned Friday at 6:45pm with 203 miles remaining

so used 40 miles in 37 ½ hours, parked in the back of the airport garage next to a Port office elevator (so likely few passengers walking near the car). (or 78% to 65% for those who think in percentages)










I cleared off my USB drive (32GB) before leaving home Thursday morning, and now it has 13.45GB used. (now to look and see if there was anything interesting to see!)
So for those having USB issues, I would suggest that the 32GB is about the minimum you really want to work with. If you are someone who parks with Sentry Mode running for extended amounts of time, probably a 64GB would be better.


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## Nautilus (Oct 10, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> I cleared off my USB drive (32GB) before leaving home Thursday morning, and now it has 13.45GB used. (now to look and see if there was anything interesting to see!)


@MelindaV , you probably know this, but in the interest of shared learning for everyone:

Rather than sift through all 30 files for each saved event, I've found that the first thing to check is the last recording from the left camera, on the last set of saved files. It's usually me returning to the car.
Otherwise, the offending event is typically in the last (sometimes 2nd to last) minute of recordings. In your particular parking situation, I'd focus on the right camera since I suspect that's where the majority of pedestrian traffic past your car will be that likely set off Sentry mode. Maybe the front camera as a car pulled into or backed out of the space in front of your car.
This will save you from watching a bunch of boring video where nothing happens!
Edit: Just saw your other post, looks like the advice above was darn close, except for getting to watch the guy in the car across from you go through his pre-departure motions.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

Nautilus said:


> @MelindaV , you probably know this, but in the interest of shared learning for everyone:
> 
> Rather than sift through all 30 files for each saved event, I've found that the first thing to check is the last recording from the left camera, on the last set of saved files. It's usually me returning to the car.
> Otherwise, the offending event is typically in the last (sometimes 2nd to last) minute of recordings. In your particular parking situation, I'd focus on the right camera since I suspect that's where the majority of pedestrian traffic past your car will be that likely set off Sentry mode. Maybe the front camera as a car pulled into or backed out of the space in front of your car.
> This will save you from watching a bunch of boring video where nothing happens!


i posted similar comments in the main Sentry thread. In my case, I found it to be not the last set of recordings, but the second from the last set.


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## Nautilus (Oct 10, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> i posted similar comments in the main Sentry thread. In my case, I found it to be not the last set of recordings, but the second from the last set.


@MelindaV , I was thinking about this and I think you're onto something here.

If the triggering event is an owner returning to their vehicle, then the video will be captured in the last minute of left camera saved for that event.
If the triggering event is something else (typically for me, someone walking past my car in a parking lot to get to their car, sometimes with a shopping cart), then the event will be in the second to last minute of video.
Now, I need to test that hypothesis to see if it is indeed true. From memory yesterday in a Costco parking lot, I think it is, but I need to be a bit more deliberate about data gathering.

Now for Tesla to make the next enhancement to Sentry mode (besides adding the remaining cameras):
_IF there is a triggering event, AND it is not in the last minute just before the car was unlocked THEN provide an alert on the car screen to the owner upon entry to the vehicle that there were Sentry events recorded._


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

Nautilus said:


> Now for Tesla to make the next enhancement to Sentry mode (besides adding the remaining cameras):
> _IF there is a triggering event, AND it is not in the last minute just before the car was unlocked THEN provide an alert on the car screen to the owner upon entry to the vehicle that there were Sentry events recorded._


that would be nice - like my blackvue has an audible alert when next getting in the car if it recorded any issues.
Maybe Tesla thinks it is only worth sending the alert (to the app) when there is an impact event causing the full Sentry warning to be activated, and not the lesser alerts.


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## Nautilus (Oct 10, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> Maybe Tesla thinks it is only worth sending the alert (to the app) when there is an impact event causing the full Sentry warning to be activated, and not the lesser alerts.


For me the biggest risk is probably someone dinging the car with a shopping cart or their door in a parking lot. Likely to trigger a recording event but not full car alarm. That's not exactly high crimes and misdemeanors, and I doubt I'd have any recourse, but at least it would let me know if I need to review the USB, rather than it slowly but surely filling up with trivial events, so it then misses something that I really wanted to have recorded. I upgraded from 8GB to 64G when Sentry Mode and 3 camera dashcam was released, once I saw how quickly the USB can fill up.


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## eXntrc (Jan 14, 2019)

** Edit:* After doing a lot more research I completely take back what I wrote here. Someone else has probably already corrected me, but I'm editing my message below with the correct info.



MelindaV said:


> So for those having USB issues, I would suggest that the 32GB is about the minimum you really want to work with. If you are someone who parks with Sentry Mode running for extended amounts of time, probably a 64GB would be better.


The problem is that current Tesla software builds support only FAT32 for the file system. If you buy a USB drive larger than 32 GB, Windows won't let you format it as FAT-32 without partitioning the drive. Despite what the manual says, Tesla does not support NTFS (nor exFAT). If you partition your 64 gig drive into two 32 gig partitions you _can_ use the second partition for USB music but you _can't_ use it to increase the amount of footage you can store from the dash cam.

So until Tesla adds support for exFAT, 32 GB is going to be the largest USB drive (or partition) you can use for dash cam.

P.S. Yes there are tools that allow you to format a drive larger than 32 GB to FAT-32, but doing so just makes anything larger than 32 GB unusable. The largest size of any FAT-32 partition is 32 GB.

The problem is that current Tesla software builds support only FAT32 for the file system. If you buy a USB drive larger than 32 GB, Windows won't let you format it as FAT-32 without using special software. Despite what the manual says, Tesla does not support NTFS (nor exFAT).

Making a FAT-32 drive larger than 32 GB requires some extra steps. If you are interested, this article walks you through it.


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## sjg98 (Aug 18, 2018)

24mi/day in sentry mode isn't _that_ bad considering my car can burn through 6mi/day without sentry mode..
Would love to see both those numbers cut in half though..
Maybe if we are lucky HW3 has a positive impact on vampire drain.. newer chips, custom designed, etc..


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

Mike said:


> Sentry mode was tried, once, last Wednesday evening until Thursday morning.
> 
> Since then I have not used it.
> 
> ...


My car finally went to sleep last night, so whatever was required of 5.15 (keeping an eye on the SOC with the new added range perhaps?) is now done.


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## lairdb (May 24, 2018)

We've been talking about Sentry power consumption in MPH terms -- useful, but I'm also interested in thinking of it in money terms. 

Check my math on this, please: 
1mph drain for Sentry = 
1/300 drain/h (just to make the math easy) * 75 KWh battery = 
0.25 drain KW/h * (effective electricity cost; I'll use my local rate of 0.47515) = 

$0.1188/h of Sentry cost. 

Did I drop a stitch anywhere?


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## RichEV (Sep 21, 2017)

lairdb said:


> We've been talking about Sentry power consumption in MPH terms -- useful, but I'm also interested in thinking of it in money terms.
> 
> Check my math on this, please:
> 1mph drain for Sentry =
> ...


Your local rate is 47 cents per kwh? Oh my! Can you get solar panels there on Earth?


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## lairdb (May 24, 2018)

RichEV said:


> Your local rate is 47 cents per kwh? Oh my! Can you get solar panels there on Earth?


Actually it's 0.51578 most months, at the margin, now that two electric cars bump us to the highest marginal rate -- effective rate is... 0.3630 on my latest bill .

Now you see why I think of it in cost terms.


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## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

lairdb said:


> Check my math on this, please:
> 1mph drain for Sentry =
> 1/300 drain/h (just to make the math easy) * 75 KWh battery =
> 0.25 drain KW/h * (effective electricity cost; I'll use my local rate of 0.47515) =
> $0.1188/h of Sentry cost.


Yep, that's basically what I got... it turns out that "75 kWh battery / 300 miles" is a great approximation for 310-mile efficiency in AWD and RWD prior to 2019.5.15. 

Another way to do it that doesn't involve the size of the battery pack:

(1 rated mi/hr) * (.250 kWh/mi rated efficiency for 310 miles) = 0.250 kWh/hr
0.250 kWh/hr * $0.475/kWh = $0.1188/hr to run Sentry Mode

For reference, if you replace 1 mph with the thread average drain rate* of ~1.05 rated mph, it works out to about $0.125/hr.

* excludes data points that may have been influenced by the 2019.5.15 RWD range bump


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## ahagge (May 6, 2017)

Off-topic, but I concur on the LEAF battery drain - got a replacement battery just prior to 60,000 miles (whew), and here's my loss since then:








​Down to about 60 miles of range now. Sigh.


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## Stats App (Jul 11, 2018)

Here is the chart that shows the phantom drain rate with and without Sentry. When activated, you lose one mile per hour with Sentry. This is from Stats App

I just added Smart Sentry a Mode feature to the app which enables a Sentry mode automatically except for regions that you designate as safe (eg, your home)


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## StevePopiel (Nov 25, 2018)

Just wondering if this phantom drain seems excessive to anyone else? I typically park for 3-4 days at a time for work and park in an airport employee lot and this is typically the only time I use Sentry mode. Losing almost a mile per hour. The outside air temperature during these 3-4 days was relatively mild, averaging anywhere between 60-80 degrees.


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I think that is about normal, it's about what I see during a workday, 9 to 10 hours, 9 to 10 miles lost.


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## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

StevePopiel said:


> Just wondering if this phantom drain seems excessive to anyone else? I typically park for 3-4 days at a time for work and park in an airport employee lot and this is typically the only time I use Sentry mode. Losing almost a mile per hour. The outside air temperature during these 3-4 days was relatively mild, averaging anywhere between 60-80 degrees.


Yep, 1 mile/hour is normal. A few of us have tracked vampire drain with Sentry Mode enabled in this thread, and the average is right around 1 mph. It's about the same drain rate as the car experiences generally when awake.


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## barjohn (Aug 31, 2017)

I have noticed that since 8.5 I am experiencing larger phantom drain @ 0.6mph. In looking at TeslaFi and my Google WiFi, I see that the car is constantly connected and sending and receiving about 50MB data spread out over the 24 hour period. That isn't a lot of data per day; however, in looking at TeslaFi data I see the car is hardly ever going to sleep. I removed the USB stick and turned off the camera icon to make sure it wasn't due to sentry mode (it is turned off as the car is in my garage). Today, I am trying logging out of STATS to see if this is what is transferring data and keeping the car awake. I suspect it is. I really like the app but not if it never lets the car sleep.


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## barjohn (Aug 31, 2017)

It has been 4 hours + and with STAT logged out, the car went to sleep and phantom drain is very very small. As much as I like STAT, it is using way too much power by constantly keeping the car awake and transferring data from it.


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## Gabzqc (Oct 15, 2016)




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