I live in a very rural part of the English Midlands, and consequently my car is usually covered in mud, excrement and, most recently, road salt thanks to the recent cold snap.
I received the 2018.10.4 update a week or so ago and, whilst its Autopilot implementation is indeed massively better than previous versions, I wasn't experiencing the mind-blowing differences various people have been evangelising.
Not being the sharpest tool in the box, it took me a few days to put the pieces together and come to the conclusion that if the new neural net model is now using all of the cameras, it would stand to reason that each of those cameras should probably be clean!
This hasn't been an issue until now as the forward-facing cameras are obviously within the wiper sweep area, but the repeater cameras on mine were so caked up with a salty horse-cow-mud mix and the pillars covered in baked-on salt, in retrospect it was hardly surprising the new algorithm wasn't working optimally. So I cleaned the cameras and suddenly it was brilliant, and I could see what everyone was raving about. Much better.
This does raise an issue, though - given the positioning of the cameras, they're going to be an utter b*****d to keep clean, making it a choice between awesome autopilot and wiping them down before every trip.
It would also be really great if the car could alert you if it wants one or more of the cameras / ultrasonics / radar aperture etc. cleaning. I'm sure it's good practice to go round and clean your lights before every trip (TESLA! Y U NO FIT HEADLIGHT WASHERS?), and therefore easy enough to do the cameras at the same time, but if I'm honest if I do so every couple of days then I'm being particularly dilligent...
Honestly I don't know how to solve this problem nicely (read: aesthetically), but it would appear it is now indeed an issue if you live in a wet, murky backwater
I received the 2018.10.4 update a week or so ago and, whilst its Autopilot implementation is indeed massively better than previous versions, I wasn't experiencing the mind-blowing differences various people have been evangelising.
Not being the sharpest tool in the box, it took me a few days to put the pieces together and come to the conclusion that if the new neural net model is now using all of the cameras, it would stand to reason that each of those cameras should probably be clean!
This hasn't been an issue until now as the forward-facing cameras are obviously within the wiper sweep area, but the repeater cameras on mine were so caked up with a salty horse-cow-mud mix and the pillars covered in baked-on salt, in retrospect it was hardly surprising the new algorithm wasn't working optimally. So I cleaned the cameras and suddenly it was brilliant, and I could see what everyone was raving about. Much better.
This does raise an issue, though - given the positioning of the cameras, they're going to be an utter b*****d to keep clean, making it a choice between awesome autopilot and wiping them down before every trip.
It would also be really great if the car could alert you if it wants one or more of the cameras / ultrasonics / radar aperture etc. cleaning. I'm sure it's good practice to go round and clean your lights before every trip (TESLA! Y U NO FIT HEADLIGHT WASHERS?), and therefore easy enough to do the cameras at the same time, but if I'm honest if I do so every couple of days then I'm being particularly dilligent...
Honestly I don't know how to solve this problem nicely (read: aesthetically), but it would appear it is now indeed an issue if you live in a wet, murky backwater
