Hello everyone, I'm a noob when it comes to EVs, so bear with me. I just recently brought home a used 2021 model 3 standard range plus rwd. It doesn't come with LFP battery btw. From my understanding, sentry mode is supposed to drain the battery. However yesterday I parked my car at work for 10 hours with sentry mode on at 56% and then when I came back it was 55%. I was also opening the tesla app several times throughout the day. Is this normal? Or is the battery still in the process of calibrating? Should I be worried that I shrieking have less charge than what is showing me?
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Sentry Mode not draining the battery?
- Thread starter CanopyofBliss
- Start date
fholbert
Active Member
I think it depends on how many alerts you get.
For months, I parked on the first level of a parking structure at the elevators. Always more than 25 alerts, in 8 hours I'd loose about 3% of my battery.
GHammer
Dark Star
I would say for some reason sentry isnt really on. It doesn't matter how many events are detected, the drain comes from the fact that the car doesn't go to sleep and stays on with the FSD computer running.
Following Occams razor, which is, (paraphrased) "the simplest answer is likely the correct one", the "simplest answer" in this situation is that you think you turned on sentry mode, but it wasnt actually on.
Sentry mode drains roughly 1 mile per hour that it is on, so 10 hours should be approximately 10-12 miles of range taken off your battery. How much you access your car through the app with sentry on wont matter, because the reason sentry mode drains the battery is it prevents the car from going to sleep (like a computer being put to sleep or not).
If the car is awake already (sentry mode) then accessing it via the app wont be additional drain since it wont have to wake up, its already awake.
So, either sentry mode wasnt actually on, or you had the 10 miles of drain and that was 1% of whatever your car was charged to, so are presenting it as such.
Is there a way to ensure sentry mode is on? I checked under safety section and it says sentry is on and I checked the controls section and the sentry and recording are selected already.
Max Spaghetti
Member
While it's parked you can open the Tesla app, and if you can view the "Live Cameras" then sentry mode is on.
View live cameras will only work if you have premium connectivity. I believe you can see that sentry is on in the mobile app settings, as you can turn it on or off from there too.
Also possible that the BMS recalculated estimated remaining capacity upward in your example, partially offsetting the sentry losses. I've seen this happen a number of times.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Number of alerts has essentially zero impact on power consumption.
fholbert
Active Member
The Sentry screen lighting up and recordings being saved 25+ times in 8 hours have no effect on power consumption?
If the car is awake for ANY reason it will use standby power, Sentry enable probably uses a slight amount more. If you connect a device to one of the USB ports that has a visual display when power is being provided at its charge port, you can tell whether the car is awake or sleeping. If you have Sentry enabled or the car is awake for any other reason while plugged into shore power for several days, it could appear you used little or no power during that period. If plugged in the car could be topping off the charge level. To test Sentry Mode power usage while plugged in or not, charge to say 85% then lower the charge point to 50%.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Almost completely negligible compared to the consumption associated with keeping the car "on" continuously.
Oxid8ter
Returning Member
I am having the opposite issue in terms of battery drain and Sentry Mode.
I have Sentry on as I do not trust grocery store parking lots, but have exclude Home set so as to not drain my battery whilst the car is overlooked by Ring cameras. I have noticed that since having my new Model 3 that the battery still seems to drain from Sentry whilst parked on my drive at home,
Has anyone else experienced this?
The other possibility is that the phone key is always connected as my home is so close to my drive, so this could be preventing the car from sleeping and that is the cause of the drain?
Which is the more likely?
I have Sentry on as I do not trust grocery store parking lots, but have exclude Home set so as to not drain my battery whilst the car is overlooked by Ring cameras. I have noticed that since having my new Model 3 that the battery still seems to drain from Sentry whilst parked on my drive at home,
Has anyone else experienced this?
The other possibility is that the phone key is always connected as my home is so close to my drive, so this could be preventing the car from sleeping and that is the cause of the drain?
Which is the more likely?
Steve446
Dusty Crophopper, M3 LR 2021 Midnight Silver
You will have some "phantom drain" as mentioned above - more or less depending on the current state of the car and sometimes the season.
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