Turn a Raspberry Pi into a smart USB drive for your GM vehicle's built-in dashcam.
Break the rolling 2-hour limit. Auto-archive everything. Modern web UI.
GM's Surround Vision Recorder (the built-in dashcam on newer EVs and ICE vehicles) records four cameras — front, left, right, rear — to a USB drive you plug into any USB-C port. But it's software-limited to a rolling 2 hours of footage, no matter how big the drive is.
Dash USB defeats that limit:
- Plugs into your car's USB-C port and pretends to be a compliant FAT32 drive.
- Continuously snapshots the recordings the car writes — before the car's rolling delete reaches them.
- Archives clips automatically to your NAS, cloud, or wherever — over WiFi, in the background. Your footage history is limited by your storage, not by GM's firmware.
- Multi-camera viewer — synchronized 4-camera playback in a modern web UI (interior camera on 2027+ models supported).
- Privacy-first. No fingerprinting by default; everything sensitive is opt-in.
Dash USB is the GM sibling of Sentry USB (for Tesla), from the Sentry Six project. It's built around a vehicle profile system — support for further brands that record to USB mass storage can be added as data, not code. Not affiliated with General Motors.
Synchronized four-camera playback of the footage your car recorded, kept as long as you want.
Every recording the car wrote, retained past the 2-hour limit and browsable in place.
The 9-step setup wizard. No SSH, no config files.
Everything reconfigurable from the browser, including Travel Mode for archiving over the vehicle hotspot.
Your vehicle needs GM's Surround Vision Recorder feature (rolling dashcam recording to USB). GM's listed drive requirements — FAT32, ≥64 GB with 32 GB available — are what the virtual drive presents by default.
| Tier | Boards | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Recommended | Raspberry Pi 4B, Raspberry Pi 5 | USB 2.0 OTG — fastest archiving, smoothest UI |
| Should work | Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ | USB 2.0 OTG, slower archive speeds |
The Pi 3 Model B and B+ will not work. Their single USB channel is wired through an onboard hub chip for Ethernet and the four USB-A ports, leaving the micro-USB port power-only with no OTG. Only the 3A+, which omits that chip, can act as a USB gadget.
Plus a 256 GB+ high-endurance MicroSD card (512 GB recommended — GM records ~5 GB per hour of driving, all of which Dash USB retains) and a USB-C data cable (USB-C to micro-USB for a Pi Zero 2 W, USB-C to USB-A for a Pi 3A+).
On a Pi already running Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit):
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo -i
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sentry-Six/Dash-USB/main/install-pi.sh | bashThen open http://dashusb.local in a browser and the setup wizard takes you the rest
of the way.
Here's everything Dash USB sends to Sentry Six services:
| When | What | Identifier? |
|---|---|---|
| When you check for updates | Software version, CPU arch, board model, update status | None by default; a salted hash of the board serial (or /etc/machine-id) if you opt in |
| First startup, before setup (retried on later boots if needed) | Empty ping (no body) | None; the server keeps a daily count |
Time zone auto |
A lookup to sentryusb.com, which sees your IP |
None |
| AI Support page (if used) | Your messages plus version, board model, vehicle profile, archive method and snapshot interval; processed by Anthropic, redacted chats kept up to 90 days. Diagnostics only when you approve, kept 7 days | Conversation only |
A device ID is sent only if you opt in under
Settings → System → Analytics opt-in (default: off). Opted-in checks are
stored with the version, architecture and board model, and a private
maintainers' Discord channel gets the version, architecture, board model and
update status. Full details are in wiki/Privacy.md.
Prerequisites: Rust stable, Node 20.19+ or 22.12+, and cross (cargo install cross).
# Web UI
cd web && npm ci && npm run build && cd ..
rm -rf crates/sentryusb/static && cp -r web/dist crates/sentryusb/static
# Binaries (aarch64)
cross build --release --target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu -p sentryusbSee BUILD.md for details.
A white-label of Sentry-USB-Rusty
(Rust rewrite of the original Go Scottmg1/Sentry-USB, now archived),
itself descended from TeslaUSB by marcone and
contributors.
- Discord — discord.gg/9QZEzVwdnt — fastest help, real humans
- Issues — github.com/Sentry-Six/Dash-USB/issues — reproducible bugs
- Site — sentry-six.com/dash-usb
PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 — free for any noncommercial use; commercial use requires a separate license. See LICENSE. Some bundled shell scripts are derived from TeslaUSB and remain under the MIT License; see NOTICE for the file-by-file breakdown.
This is source-available software, not open source — commercial use is not permitted under this license. To inquire about a commercial license, contact the authors.