What do spoil the view of a road? Drops on the glass, refracting light beams. Let's us use the refraction. 1. Let some opto-emitter illuminate the glass at an angle of about 30 degrees 2. Then let a set (matrix) of opto-receivers receive the resulting picture (90 degrees maybe). When the glass is clear, store in memory the receivers' outputs. 3. When drops have spoiled the picture, receivers' outputs should got different from stored in memory, provided they have proper focus (curved inwards, may be) to catch drops' refraction. Get the standard deviation or what the heck is appropriate in this case and decide if the view got spoiled enough to start cleaning. Mike. -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body