Thursday, May 14, 2020

New Sentry Mode Screen Animation

So apparently MGM did not like Tesla using Hall 9000 from the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey' for Sentry Mode. So it switched to something else with an update that resembles a turret from the game Portal. Those jerks at MGM!

Sentry mode is pretty cool to keep the vehicle safe when left alone, though it does use some additional power but not much to affect range unless you leave it on for many days. This is what the new icon looks like:

New Sentry Mode screen graphic when activated

One thing I have found is that Sentry mode gets a lot of false alarms at night. See the video.

This is specially true if the Tesla is parked under or next to a tree or nearby bushes and it is windy or when it is raining at night.

Recently we went on a vacation and the Tesla was parked under a tree in the small parking lot of a bed and breakfast and it was raining over night. I kept seeing flashes of a headlight from the parking lot at night and was think some jerk was out there at 10 pm messing about his car. When I finally looked outside it was my Model 3 flashing. Oops! I guess I was the jerk! I used my app to turn of sentry mode and I wasn't sure if it was the trees or the rain hitting the cameras. The next day in that hour of rain the car had 49 recorded events and all I could see was various rain drops moving on the cameras and moving leaves. It would be nice if Tesla had a way to notify the phone app that sentry mode has been activated.

When Sentry mode gets activated, I wanted to see what it looks like, so I turned the Bluetooth off on my phone and shot this quick little walk around video. I have countless Sentry videos of pople pointing at the screen and being curious: