Teslas get ‘surveillance mode’ where cameras record all sides of the car

Elon Musk announces that Tesla will soon release a so-called Sentry Mode for all cars that have Autopilot 2.5. This mode allows several cameras to be used to record a 360-degree image around the car.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, says on Twitter that the Tesla Sentry Mode will be released soon. At first he said that this is only the case for all Tesla cars that have the Enhanced Autopilot, but later he clarified this by stating that all cars with ‘AP2+’ get access to the new mode.

Musk confirmed the arrival of this mode in response to a Tesla owner who discovered a dent in his Tesla that sat near the rear-facing camera. The intention is to use the eight cameras around the Sentry mode, which all Teslas have been equipped with since 2016. But in this case it probably only concerns Teslas with Hardware 2.5, which have been delivered since October 2017.

The new mode is in fact an extension of the already existing TeslaCam function. This feature uses a single, forward-facing Autopilot camera mounted above the rear-view mirror to capture images of what’s happening directly in front of the car. To do this, users must insert a fat32 formatted USB drive containing a folder called TeslaCam into a USB port in the car. The camera will then automatically start recording, but this can also be checked via an icon on the touchscreen. The USB drive can store the most recent ten minutes of a video; these images will not be overwritten.

This TeslaCam feature has its limitations, including the USB stick method and the fact that only the forward-facing cameras can be used. The new Sentry Mode should also include cameras that can image the sides and back of Teslas, which amounts to a kind of surveillance camera function that captures a 360-degree image. It is unclear whether the images in Sentry mode are also stored on a stick or otherwise.

Update, 3:40 PM: Musk spoke on Twitter about AP2+ hardware. It is somewhat unclear whether he means version 2.0 and above or greater than 2, ie 2.5. The TeslaCam feature only works with Autopilot version 2.5. He probably means the latter.