All FSD/HW3 + MCU1 cars record broken dashcam video?

[t3sl4drvr]

Issue

When car is moving and there is enough movement recorded by the cameras, video becomes broken. Seems like MCU1 cannot keep up with HW3 for storing video stream and parts of the MPEG stream is lost.

Note: Issue only manifests with a moving car and enough movement in the picture (when MPEG steam rate increases sufficiently). When car is still or there isn't enough movement in the video stream, recordings are ok.

At worst the video can at times look like this:

Full video in YouTube


Affected cars

Hypothesis: Every car with MCU1 + FSD/HW3 combination is affected

Note:

• Affected cars later upgraded to MCU2 are cured of the issue
• Replacement MCU1 with fixed eMMC does not solve the issue
• Issue appears regardless of the storage media
• MCU1 + FSD/HW2.5 or FSD/HW2.0 cars are not affected unless upgraded to FSD/HW3

How to test your car

Check if your car has FSD/HW3 + MCU1.

In your car, select Software > Additional vehicle information. If the dialog has the following info, your car has FSD/HW3 + MCU1:

• Autopilot computer: Full self-driving computer
• Infotainment processor: NVIDIA® Tegra®

To reproduce issue:

• Connect a USB drive to your car
• Format it if needed
• Go for a drive
• While car is moving, start dashcam recording
• Repeat couple of times

Observe if recoded videos have "choppiness", it is an indication of MPEG stream missing information.

If all video seem clear and fluid, your car likely does not have this issue.


What can I do about this?

Open up a service case in mobile app, explaining the issue. Ask them to solve the issue under warranty.

Currently only known solution is to pay for Infotainment (MCU2) upgrade. If you choose to pay, archive documentation of the service conversation and receipts in case Tesla is forced to refund those later.

Share your test report in this thread (whether your car has the issue). If it turns out that most or even all of the MCU1 + FSD/HW3 cars have this defect, Tesla might be forced to fix the issue on their own cost for all of us. In the best case, this might give free MCU2 upgrades to affected car owner and refunds to one who paid for MCU2 upgrade themselves.




Note to admin: There are related threads previously at the forum (some of which are linked from this post). Discussions on those threads are focused on figuring out what the problem might be. This thread is separate to allow collecting reports to either support or disprove the specific hypothesis that all MCU1+FSD/HW3 cars are affected. If hypothesis turns out to be true, this would help affected car owners to have Tesla fix the issue.

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Issue reproduces on my 2017 Model S with MCU1 + FSD/HW3. Software version 2020.48.37.6.

 

[Pink Duck]

Issue apparent on my 2018 Model S with MCU1/FSD on AP2.1 since they released Dashcam beta (hesitantly, you may recall), but notably worse levels of corruption (along with all UI) since AP3 upgrade. It seem like Tesla also prioritise resources for near-collision events for themselves, leaving insufficient computation for customer USB dashcam encoding.

I believe eMMC does play a part, as they store video capture on internal storage, regardless of Dashcam, as part of AP shadow training.



With Transcend JetFlash USB 3.1 stick-drive supporting sustained write speed of 23 MB/s (10 GB file test). Software version 2020.48.37.8

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Solution seems to buy MCU2:

We had issues with the recordings with HW3 & MCU1. Our car was originally AP2.0 & MCU1. With HW3 + MCU1 we had Sentry only, no dashcam, IIRC. I know we had Sentry, because we captured footage when someone backed into our car in a parking lot. With HW3 + MCU2 the video quality is much improved. It still occasionally skips, but not very often. The pixelation issues are resolved. Our pixelation was never as bad as @t3sl4drvr, but it did happen on just about every saved video. Once MCU2 dropped to $1500 we scheduled our appointment.

IMO this is not acceptable, Tesla cannot just break existing features from the car if you pay them for FSD.

 

[t3sl4drvr]

One issue report here

Not mine, found it on twitter. Owner reports it was recording onto a high speed usb that was also used with his wife's model 3 and has no issues. MCU1 problem?

 

[t3sl4drvr]

My tests with three different storage medium

Did some more debugging today.

Tested with three different drives:
1) 512GB SSD that I benchmarked to have 375MB/s write speed
2) 64GB SanDisk Ultra USB Stick that I benchmarked to have 90MB/s write speed
3) 400GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC that I benchmarked to have 22MB/s write speed

Each of them is formatted with two ExFAT partitions - one for Music and another for Dashcam.

Recoding DashCam video with each of them is a hit or miss. When the car is moving, the data rate obviously increases hitting some internal bottleneck and the data stream gets corrupted. Here are frames taken from video saved today to each of the drives.

1) 512GB SSD
View attachment 705631
Full video in YouTube (they recompress, so not the original stream)



2) 64GB SanDisk Ultra USB Stick
View attachment 705630
Full video in YouTube (they recompress, so not the original stream)



3) 400GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC
View attachment 705632
Full video on YouTube (they recompress, so not the original stream)

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Here are examples confirming that eMMC upgrade does not fix the issue

OK, so new eMMC has been installed. I've uploaded a few random clips from driving around today. I'll leave the judgement up to you. All clips loaded to YouTube straight off of my thumb drive.

This is the thumb drive that I have:
USB 3.1 Flash Drive FIT Plus 128GB Memory & Storage - MUF-128AB/AM | Samsung US

 

[viper2ko]

Obvious mcu1 is th issue

 

[t3sl4drvr]

Obvious mcu1 is th issue

Yes. I am trying to prove this to Tesla service center to get them to fix it under warranty. I believe the only way to do this is for them to install MCU2.

 

[RedSoxFan18]

I am having exactly this problem. Beyond pissed at this point. Spent 10K on the FSD upgrade, as part of that the FSD computer was installed. Also had the eMMC upgrade as part of the recall. So here I am with an MCU1 car and I cannot even get a firmware upgrade that would allow me to request to be part of the FSD Beta let alone the actual FSD firmware. I want my 10K back.

 

[Pink Duck]

With the free retrofit of AP2.0 cameras to enable them to use FSD Beta, perhaps it'll only be a matter of time before something is done about the long-suffering MCU1 owners.

NHTSA released latest quarterly eMMC recall rate figures yesterday: 4,485 in Q1, 9,024 in Q2, 13,667 in Q3 - only 107,775 to go!

 

[ahkahn]

Here are examples confirming that eMMC upgrade does not fix the issue

Those were my videos. FWIW, I can confirm that once I upgraded my MCU1 to an MCU2 (got tired of the crappy performance) those issues went away.

 

[jun3280net]

Feel your pain @t3sl4drvr. Great that you posted this, as it will be useful for others experiencing the same problems. Really frustrating that the HW3 upgrade degraded the usability of MCU1 to the point I was forced to upgrade to MCU2 as well. Being in Canada (no Beta FSD), I really wish they would have refunded my FSD purchase, so I could get the MCU2 upgrade instead. I just received my MCU2 upgrade this week. The MCU2 definitely solves all of the issues : unviewable dashcam video, MCU freeze/black screen, unusable voice navigation, sluggish user interface, intermittent streaming audio problems. etc.

On that note - I have noticed with MCU2 upgrade, my 2017 S 90D is not sleeping anymore. So range I'm loosing around 1km per hour each night. I've read others with that problem as well, but I'm still investigating.

Wish everyone afflicted by this all the best - but the MCU2 upgrade is probably worth it - from a user experience perspective - for a car you spent over 100K on.

 

[Amber85]

I am having exactly this problem. Beyond pissed at this point. Spent 10K on the FSD upgrade, as part of that the FSD computer was installed. Also had the eMMC upgrade as part of the recall. So here I am with an MCU1 car and I cannot even get a firmware upgrade that would allow me to request to be part of the FSD Beta let alone the actual FSD firmware. I want my 10K back.

Me, too.
LOTS of glitches since HW3 update & replacement ot eMMC and tired of having to reboot the car weekly to try to prevent them. My owner’s manual hasn’t loaded for over a year now, even after 2 factory resets.
2017 S 75D

 

[Pink Duck]

Same for me, getting the owner's manual to open is… tricky (on original eMMC).

(aerial tiles off, traffic off, chargers off, clear navigation history, disable sentry mode, disable and unplug dashcam, soft restart MCU1, open Sketchpad and leave open, then Cog > Owner’s Manual works - slowly, for a while)

Have downloaded the PDF to my phone, just waiting on en-GB localisation to happen.

 

[jun3280net]

Me, too.
LOTS of glitches since HW3 update & replacement ot eMMC and tired of having to reboot the car weekly to try to prevent them. My owner’s manual hasn’t loaded for over a year now, even after 2 factory resets.
2017 S 75D

@Amber85 and @Pink Duck it really sucks we all got put in this position. By all accounts, not upgrading to HW3 - we'd all be better off. HW3 gives you stopping at lights, at the expense of all normal functions. It's really unfortunate that Tesla went down this route of not upgrading HW3 and MCU2 at the same time. There was a rumor very early on, that MCU2 was a requirement, and would upgraded for free. While this requirement is true to maintain basic functionality of the vehicle, the Autopilot technically did work with MCU1 - so that's the grey area Tesla decided to play in.

I thought about waiting for my MCU1 to die, and hope for an MCU2 replacement, but I didn't want to sour my experience with the car which I generally enjoyed. It's not cheap, but the MCU2 upgrade will make your experience more enjoyable. At the very least - you get proper updates, and closer to FSD Beta as well. In time, maybe with enough support and complaining, Tesla does the right thing and rectifies this for free for all afflicted owners. However, demand is so strong, I'd be more inclined to say, we're of the minority. I wish you all the best, but wanted to provide some perspective as I grew impatient waiting for a fix.

 

[viper2ko]

Hold off on Any upgades. MCU3 upgrade might be coming

 

[jun3280net]

Hold off on Any upgades. MCU3 upgrade might be coming

@viper2ko, you referencing the AMD Ryzen chip? That'd be pretty cool if they did that. I wonder if they would do that for older versions of Model S and X which have different hardware setup than Model 3/Y and current S/X.

 

[rush6410]

I have yet to see a HW3/MCU1 video that is not pixelated. So, there is no point of reference in any condition where it is clear. I had the same configuration for 8 months with the same pixelation. I finally upgraded to MCU2. Personally, the slow navigation and voice commands was enough for me to upgrade. Their preemptive emmc failure testing is pretty basic programming and detection. You just write 0s then 1s and look for bad returns.

 

[dbldwn02]

My HW3/MCU1 videos are 50/50. 50 percent pixelated...50 percent can't read a license plate