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Schedule Sentry Mode: Save Battery With Automatic On/Off Times

Schedule Sentry Mode: Save Battery With Automatic On/Off Times

by Sentry Pro Team
announcementfeaturesSentry ModeBattery Lifeautomation

Sentry Mode is only useful when you actually need it. Running it 24/7 in your own locked garage? That’s just draining your battery for no reason. Running it during the workday in a secure office parking structure? Same story.

That’s why we built Schedule Sentry Mode — a new feature in Sentry Pro that automatically turns Sentry Mode on and off at the times you choose, every single day. Set it once, forget it forever.

The Battery Math Nobody Talks About

Sentry Mode typically draws 1-2% of battery per hour — that adds up to roughly 7-14% per day if you leave it on around the clock. Even on the low end, that’s a meaningful chunk of range gone every single day, much of it spent guarding your car while it’s already sitting safely in your own driveway.

Most Tesla owners don’t need protection 24 hours a day. They need it:

  • Overnight, when the car is parked on the street or in a driveway
  • During the day, when parked in public lots, shopping centers, or unfamiliar areas
  • While traveling, when the car is somewhere unknown

The rest of the time? You’re in a secure garage, at home, or somewhere you already trust. Schedule Sentry Mode lets you stop paying the battery tax for protection you don’t need.

How It Works

The setup is deliberately simple. Open Sentry Pro, select your vehicle, and tap the new Schedule tile on the main vehicle screen.

Three controls, that’s it:

  1. Enable Schedule — the master toggle
  2. Turn ON at — the time Sentry Mode should activate
  3. Turn OFF at — the time Sentry Mode should deactivate

Pick your times. Done. (One small constraint: ON and OFF need to be at least 30 minutes apart, so you can’t accidentally create a schedule that toggles itself off the moment it turns on.)

Overnight Schedules Just Work

A classic problem with time-based automation is what happens when your schedule crosses midnight. Want Sentry Mode on from 8:00 PM to 7:00 AM? That’s two different calendar days, and plenty of apps choke on it.

Sentry Pro handles this natively. Set an ON time that’s later than your OFF time, and the app recognizes you want an overnight schedule. You’ll see a small confirmation in the panel: “Sentry ON overnight (crosses midnight)”. No math, no workarounds, no two separate schedules to maintain.

Every Day, Automatically — Even With Your Phone Off

Once enabled, the schedule repeats daily. The important detail: this isn’t a phone-side timer. Sentry Pro’s backend holds the schedule and dispatches the on/off commands to your Tesla at the right time, every day. Your phone can be off, dead, or in airplane mode — the schedule still runs.

Pairs Well With Tesla’s Home/Work Exclusions

Tesla itself lets you mark Home and Work as locations where Sentry Mode should be excluded. That’s location-based: the car decides based on where it is.

Schedule Sentry Mode is time-based: it decides based on when it is. The two are complementary.

  • Tesla’s exclusions skip Sentry at your saved Home and Work locations, but leave it running everywhere else around the clock.
  • A schedule layers on top, so even when you’re parked somewhere that isn’t Home or Work, Sentry only runs during the hours you actually want it to.

Use them together: Tesla handles the where, Sentry Pro handles the when.

Under the Hood

For the technically curious:

  • Schedule execution lives on Sentry Pro’s backend, which dispatches the on/off commands to your Tesla via the official Tesla Fleet API at your chosen times
  • Times are stored as minutes-since-midnight along with your timezone offset — set the schedule from your home timezone and it stays anchored there even when you travel
  • If a command doesn’t go through, you’ll see the failure on the schedule screen with a manual Retry option
  • Requires Tesla’s vehicle_cmds auth scope (granted automatically the first time you authenticate Sentry Pro with your Tesla account)

Getting Started

Schedule Sentry Mode is part of Sentry Pro Premium.

  1. Update Sentry Pro from the App Store
  2. Open the app and select your Tesla
  3. Tap the Schedule tile on the vehicle screen
  4. Toggle Enable Schedule, set your ON and OFF times
  5. Close the app — the schedule runs on its own

That’s the whole setup. A two-minute change that can meaningfully cut your daily Sentry-related battery drain.

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Questions about Schedule Sentry Mode? Check out our FAQ or reach out to our support team. Smart protection shouldn’t cost you range.

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