Sentry Mode Shouldn’t Just Be for EVs

By Kurt Busch

I’ve driven a lot of vehicles in my life. My first car leaked oil, drank lots of gas and had roll-down windows. Over time I upgraded to better rides, most recently a Tesla and Rivian, which are hands down my all-time favorites.

It started the first time I used Sentry Mode, a Tesla security feature that uses the car’s cameras to monitor surroundings and record activity. I was parked on a side street and someone walked a little too close to the vehicle. A notification and crystal clear video of the event was sent to me a few minutes later. Nothing seriously happened, but knowing I had eyes on it surprisingly gave me a sense of comfort. It changed how I thought about security. It was no longer a reactive feature. It was proactive. Always on. Always watching. I was hooked.

Another time my Rivian recorded a clip of a backpack-wearing passerby bumping into the vehicle. No damage, just a moment in time captured that I would have never known about. It made me realize the immense value of awareness. It's not always about catching criminals. Sometimes it's just about knowing what happened.

But here's the thing. Sentry Mode burns power. That is totally fine when you are sitting on a 70 or 100 kilowatt-hour battery pack. But what happens when your car is a gas-powered sedan with a standard 12-volt battery?

I learned that the hard way. I recall a time when my old pickup was parked at the airport for a week and noticed a big scratch on the side door. No cameras. No alerts. Just the mystery. Worse, there was no recourse and no evidence. It bugged me the whole drive home. It was not about the scratch. It was about the not knowing.

My solution at the time was to install an aftermarket dashcam. The camera recorded great video footage while driving but stopped when the engine turned off. I looked into enabling motion detection but soon realized it would kill the battery in under 24 hours when the car was parked. I was forced to choose between smart features and a working car battery, a trade-off that didn’t make sense.

At Syntiant, we asked a simple question: Why is this kind of intelligence only available to EVs?

We decided to fix it. We built a solution designed from the ground up to sip power and not guzzle it. Our system keeps cameras asleep but is always listening. When it hears or sees something meaningful, it wakes up instantly, records the moment, then goes back to sleep. It does this under 200 milliwatts. That means you can leave your car parked for weeks and still have active perimeter awareness. Even if it runs on a basic 12-volt battery.

This does not just help owners of built-in systems. It is a game-changer for aftermarket dashcams, too.

Before Syntiant, you had two options: 1) a battery-friendly dashcam with no real smarts; or 2) an AI-powered dashcam that drains your battery in less than 48 hours.

Now you can have both. And it’s not just for EVs.

And our customers are reaping the benefits. One of them in the fleet tracking business told us they loved dashcams but had to disable them overnight because the battery drain was just too much. We provided them with our vehicle sensing technology running on one of our ultra-low-power NDPs. They called us back two weeks later - thrilled. Needless to say, we were able to offer always-on monitoring with near-zero power consumption.

That is what we mean by making intelligence work in the real world. Quietly. Efficiently. Without fanfare, but with real results.

This is not just a technical win. It’s  personal. I have left my kids' cars parked at their college dorms, hoping nothing happens. I have parked at airports for long business trips. I have talked to delivery drivers who worry about theft and parents who want a second set of eyes on the family minivan. They all want the same thing. They want to know what happened when they were not there.

And they deserve a solution that does not punish them for wanting peace of mind.

That is what we built. Not flashy. Just quietly brilliant.

EV-style security – for every car.

That is a good day’s work.