Question about the dashcam functionality

[exxxviii]

3kWh per day is only 125 watts average consumption.

Image analysis is computationally expensive. The car computer can't sleep, it has to record all the cameras and perform frame analysis on all of them all the time. I'd guess that costs at least 100-200 watts.

Great points. Lucid's major problem probably is real-time image processing to detect motion. If they have janky algorithms that are massively burning the GPU, they could dial up some serious battery drain.

 

[pr4424]

I'm not sure where you guys are getting that Tesla's use 4% a day for sentry mode but that is wrong....unless you live on a busy road where there is always something happening near your car and it stays awake 24/7. Another side note, Sentry mode came out in 2019.

 

[RandomDesign]

I'm not sure where you guys are getting that Tesla's use 4% a day for sentry mode but that is wrong....unless you live on a busy road where there is always something happening near your car and it stays awake 24/7. Another side note, Sentry mode came out in 2019.

It's pretty well documented from people testing it that it uses about that much. Maybe parked in a garage with nothing around it uses less but it's pretty useless then anyway.

 

[pr4424]

Maybe from a long time ago but I haven't noticed that in a long time. I have a 2022 model y parked about 30 feet from a main road with century mode on 24/7.

 

[drb3333]

Maybe from a long time ago but I haven't noticed that in a long time. I have a 2022 model y parked about 30 feet from a main road with century mode on 24/7.

In my experience passing cars do not trigger it; did you actually get detection from traffic? If so, your cam should have been flooded with video events, if not, then no trigger.

My personal observation is from a 2023 Model Y parked at my office with about one or two events per three hours. Two years worth of data was ~4%/day and deactivated in my home garage for the remaining 16 hours per day.

If sentry ever becomes available, I would be parking in the same spot with the same event count, so I would anticipate similar power usage.

 

[BS8899]

Have you had a Tesla? I think they have been refining Sentey for like 10 years to get it where it is now, and IIRC it’s still about 4%/day off the big battery. I cannot think of any other BEV automaker doing Sentey right now.

Never had the pleasure of owning a Tesla. Even though I equipped my garage for simultaneously charging tow EVs at the same time since 2008, I refused to buy a Tesla. Don't get me wrong, I think Tesla was a pioneer. But I dislike many aspects of Tesla, and I chose not to own one.

Yes, if you have a dancing party all days/night in front of your vehicle in sentry mode, it could drain your battery. But that's not the life I was privileged to.

I think sentry mode is a legitimate feature. As long as you lead a normal life!

 

[exxxviii]

unless you live on a busy road where there is always something happening near your car and it stays awake 24/7

Yes, if you have a dancing party all days/night in front of your vehicle in sentry mode, it could drain your battery. But that's not the life I was privileged to.

It is not surrounding activity that drives battery drain. It is that all the cameras must be live full-time and the main computer is fully active doing real-time video processing to detect motion. And it is recording everything - the motion detection only determines what recordings to preserve.

 

[BS8899]

It is not surrounding activity that drives battery drain. It is that all the cameras must be live full-time and the main computer is fully active doing real-time video processing to detect motion. And it is recording everything - the motion detection only determines what recordings to preserve.

Can someone enlighten us on the following:
> there are multiple aftermarket dashcams that have sentry mode, correct? These cameras are typically hooked up to the USB ports in the car. They have relatively low power dissipation, definitely not kWh/day. Am I correct?

Hence, the predicament is NOT that a low-power sentry mode camera system cannot be built and used in EVs, Tesla, or Lucid, etc.. Rather, in order to use the EV's built-in drive mode cameras, computer, storage, as your sentry system you must leave this whole chain of electronics powered on, hence the large power drain. Is this correct?

If so, why can't Lucid (or Tesla) just use an auxiliary, low-power dashcam type of system instead of monkeying around with the drive-cams?

 

[Saksak]

If so, why can't Lucid (or Tesla) just use an auxiliary, low-power dashcam type of system instead of monkeying around with the drive-cams?

The concept is simple, but the cost and implementation is not. You can’t use the same solution for small scale versus large scale.

For example, you can buy a GoPro and record video with very little power draw. Instead of a GoPro, though, you can record video with your laptop’s built-in camera. That requires your entire laptop to be powered up and the power draw is orders of magnitude larger.

While the power draw from the GoPro camera and laptop camera maybe the same, you have much bigger processors, network cards, memory cards, and storage devices on the laptop.

You would have to design an entire low-power GoPro-like subsystem within the laptop for this one use case. That leads to a bigger laptop that is more expensive.

Car manufacturers have decided it’s not worth it. The components involved in “just” recording video are scaled up to handle all the car functions, just like the computer versus GoPro.

 

[borski]

The concept is simple, but the cost and implementation is not. You can’t use the same solution for small scale versus large scale.

For example, you can buy a GoPro and record video with very little power draw. Instead of a GoPro, though, you can record video with your laptop’s built-in camera. That requires your entire laptop to be powered up and the power draw is orders of magnitude larger.

While the power draw from the GoPro camera and laptop camera maybe the same, you have much bigger processors, network cards, memory cards, and storage devices on the laptop.

You would have to design an entire low-power GoPro-like subsystem within the laptop for this one use case. That leads to a bigger laptop that is more expensive.

Car manufacturers have decided it’s not worth it. The components involved in “just” recording video are scaled up to handle all the car functions, just like the computer versus GoPro.

That was a spectacular explanation. Thanks. I’m stealing that.

 

[BS8899]

The concept is simple, but the cost and implementation is not. You can’t use the same solution for small scale versus large scale.

For example, you can buy a GoPro and record video with very little power draw. Instead of a GoPro, though, you can record video with your laptop’s built-in camera. That requires your entire laptop to be powered up and the power draw is orders of magnitude larger.

While the power draw from the GoPro camera and laptop camera maybe the same, you have much bigger processors, network cards, memory cards, and storage devices on the laptop.

You would have to design an entire low-power GoPro-like subsystem within the laptop for this one use case. That leads to a bigger laptop that is more expensive.

Car manufacturers have decided it’s not worth it. The components involved in “just” recording video are scaled up to handle all the car functions, just like the computer versus Go

The concept is simple, but the cost and implementation is not. You can’t use the same solution for small scale versus large scale.

For example, you can buy a GoPro and record video with very little power draw. Instead of a GoPro, though, you can record video with your laptop’s built-in camera. That requires your entire laptop to be powered up and the power draw is orders of magnitude larger.

While the power draw from the GoPro camera and laptop camera maybe the same, you have much bigger processors, network cards, memory cards, and storage devices on the laptop.

You would have to design an entire low-power GoPro-like subsystem within the laptop for this one use case. That leads to a bigger laptop that is more expensive.

Car manufacturers have decided it’s not worth it. The components involved in “just” recording video are scaled up to handle all the car functions, just like the computer versus GoPro.

Exactly!

Hence, just add a 2k/4k dashcam with its own microSD card.

 

[exxxviii]

Exactly!

Hence, just add a 2k/4k dashcam with its own microSD card.

A good dash cam with parking mode probably burns around 5 watts and costs around $500. You would need at least 4 of them for full car coverage like sentry mode implementations. You are talking 20 W total and adding at least $2,000 to the price of the car, but it is probably a lot more than $2K. As estimated above, a well-implemented Sentry system probably burns about 125 W. Doing it with dash cams could save some power, but it would be dramatically more complex and less usable because of four separate systems and video storage devices.

 

[mfdutra]

Tesla and Lucid have chosen the route of having one large computer and have everything else being software driven. If you look at GM or BMW, they all use multiple ECUs that talk to each other. With multiple ECUs, in theory, you can have one that's very optimized to just run the cameras in low-power mode.

For software teams, developing for multiple dedicated ECUs is a colossal pain in the ass. They're all very limited and your hands are tied to whatever the hardware can provide. Having a large generic computer is much more flexible and future proof.

 

[TonyG]

Just watched a Utube video of setting up Halo Secure. When I first got my Gravity I set Halo up to record, formatting the USB drive, and when I honk the horn to test it will say recording for the 30 seconds after the event. On the Utube, the guy was able to view the recording - I can’t for the life of me even see how many files are recorded. I’m parked, push the Halo button on the pilot panel and it just starts recording again. It never gets to view mode. Is that what you all are seeing too ?

 

[RandomDesign]

Just watched a Utube video of setting up Halo Secure. When I first got my Gravity I set Halo up to record, formatting the USB drive, and when I honk the horn to test it will say recording for the 30 seconds after the event. On the Utube, the guy was able to view the recording - I can’t for the life of me even see how many files are recorded. I’m parked, push the Halo button on the pilot panel and it just starts recording again. It never gets to view mode. Is that what you all are seeing too ?

You're pressing the Halo button (looks like a shield) on the bottom of the Pilot Panel and not the one on the top of the top display? That bottom one shouldn't cause it to record, only the one on the top clearview panel should do that. You might have to tap the ellipsis (...) to see it, I believe by default it's not pinned to the bottom.

You can see a bunch of the setup and menus in this video starting around the 20 minute mark:

 

[TonyG]

You're pressing the Halo button (looks like a shield) on the bottom of the Pilot Panel and not the one on the top of the top display? That bottom one shouldn't cause it to record, only the one on the top clearview panel should do that. You might have to tap the ellipsis (...) to see it, I believe by default it's not pinned to the bottom.

You can see a bunch of the setup and menus in this video starting around the 20 minute mark:

Many thanks - that solved my issue!