Viewing Tesla Sentry/DashCam Videos on iPhone/iPad
Viewing Sentry videos recorded by your Tesla on iPhone/iPad is easy, but it can be a bit confusing first.
There are a few ways to do this and this article attempts to list the most convenient ways of doing so.
Method 1: Direct Connection with No Adapter
In this solution, you need the following:
To make this solution work, just format the iXpand drive as FAT32 (this is a Tesla requirement), add a TeslaCam folder (it’s case-sensitive) to the drive.
When formatting the iXpand drive, please following the steps shows in the screenshot below. “Step 4” is important (otherwise, iOS will not be able to read the drive).
Now you can plug in the iXpand drive to the USB port of your Tesla and let it record videos. After you unplug the iXpand from Tesla, you can insert the Lightning port of iXpand to iPhone/iPad and launch the SentryView app. Note: Make sure you eject the USB drivr from Tesla properly by long-pressing on the camera button and waiting until the red dot on the camera button beocmes gray before unplugging the USB drive
Method 2: Get a Plug-and-Play Bundle
Everything that you need is included in this bundle from PureTesla (no affiliation). The SD card is pre-formatted for Tesla already and the bundle also includes an app for iPhone/iPad.
This video shows how this bundle works:
Method 3: Connecting Other Storage Devices (non-iXpand)
In this method you need the following:
- A storage device such as Samsung T5 SSD 1TB or Samsung T5 SSD 500GB
- A USB to Lightning Adapter
- SentryView app
To make this solution work:
- Format the storage device as FAT32 (this is a Tesla requirement) and create a TeslaCam folder on the drive
- Connect the storage device to the USB port of the adapter
- Connect the USB side of the Lightning cord to a free USB port in the car (directly and not through a hub) and the Lightning side of the power cord to the Lightning port of the adapter.
- Connect the Lightning side of the adapter to your iPhone/iPad
This setup is shown in the following figure (image courtesy of Matt Ferrell).
Note: If your storage device has a USB-C port, you may not even need an adapter for viewing on iPad Pro with USB-C; You can just connect the storage device to iPad Pro using a USB-C to USB-C cable.
Disclaimer: the two apps mentioned in this article are developed by me.
You may also like this article about Tesla battery longevity.
