Rain sensing wipers too tolerant of rain

[Toysla]

The current / latest "Auto-wiper" operation (or lack of), is akin to including 4-wheel ABS brakes as standard equipment, yet those same brakes take the longest distance to stop the vehicle...
C'mon Tesla, we know you can fix this software too!!

 

[scottm]

C'mon Tesla, we know you can fix this software too!!

No, I'm not sure they can.

Wipe.

Physics of focusing at distances that camera lenses are mounted closely to the windshield for observing traffic cannot have a clear view of droplets forming on the windshield, day or night. And in the dark, not a hope. But who drives in the dark, right?

(An IR bounce detector can definitely directly measure size of droplets on windshield day and night with or without exterior illumination.)

Tesla software tries to guess when to wipe ... by images beginning to blur it infers something must be wiped from the windshield ... it can't really tell what it is that needs to be wiped... just that vision is being obscured.

Wipe.

The thing is ... how does the car discern blur caused by droplets when everything in view is moving? It's all a blur of motion. It wants to compare clarity of objects over time .. but these objects move out of view quickly as you're driving.

Things near the edges of the view are moving faster. Things near the center are moving slower - better to target for rain tests. Maybe the software targets something in view that is always static, like the front part of hood, that would be a big help for comparing views over time for detecting increased blur.

Maybe this is the sweet spot zone for the neural net:

Wipe.

 

[4SUPER9]

I just made the bold move and turned off the auto wipe feature. Honestly, I feel like an idiot, not realizing this was an option. The intermittent timed wipers work very well, as sufficient as I can ever need. I’ll switch back to auto-wipe if and when they are ever improved.

 

[4SUPER9]

I heard from another thread in the Model 3 section that the wipers were much improved with 2019.12.1. I agree. I turned the rain sensors back on today as a trial and they worked far far better than before.

 

[jyalpert]

They worked fine for me when using a fresh coat of RainX (the car came from the factory with rainX on the windshield), but once the rainX wore off, the auto wipers seem to wait ~1-2 seconds too long before firing - just enough to be annoying, but not maddeningly so. I've been leaving them on in light rain, and then toggling to manual/intermittent for heavier rain. Will rainX again when we get a clear day.

 

[alexGS]

Being able to change the wiper manual settings w/o touching the screen would be another great option.
Tapping the left stalk triggers a manual wipe and pops up the wiper settings on the screen.
If during the few seconds the modal wiper popup is showing you could control it with one of the steer wheel scroll buttons that would be perfect.
Similar to the way the volume wheel controls the alert/nav volume if you scroll during an alert/nav sound.
Sort of making it a contextual scroll.

I really think this bears repeating as an excellent idea - it seems we have skills here than they need on the Tesla software team! And, reading this reminded me of what a ‘modal dialog box’ is; one that appears in front of, and takes over, the display.

It makes perfect sense to use the volume wheel, as it’s on the same side as the wiper button. So, a press on the stalk button and then a roll of the wheel up or down (which would also move a sensitivity slider on the screen) - rolling the wheel all the way up in a panic (or holding the button in) could defeat the ‘auto’ setting completely and put the wipers on continuous. The wiping speed could easily be made speed-sensitive also.

A double-press of the button could turn wipers off or revert to ‘auto’. It should be easy to operate the wipers reliably when you need them, without requiring touchscreen interaction.

I have never found any rain-sensing wiper system to respond quickly enough for a sudden tropical deluge or a passing truck - they just take too long to ramp up and down. Sometimes you need 100% and then to stop it just as quickly when the sun shines through the smears.

-Alex