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Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

arstechnica.com

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Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#151

Post by Retric »

DanHulton wrote: post #86
Strom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logitech has orders of magnitude more experience in manufacturing peripherals than Microsoft. That said, Logitech does make products in a wide price range and the low end isn't competitive with their own high end.

"Low end" and "high end" in the gaming market doesn't necessarily equate to "reliability," however. "Style" and "customizability" are very high on the differentiators between low/high for gaming peripherals, neither of which are necessary on a sub. The reviews for the controller (mentioned by name in the article, so easy to look up) are generally great (4.2/5 with thousands of reviews), and the 1/2-star reviews are a…

It’s not about having a RGB controller, it’s the fact you can get a COTS controller built for boats which is vastly less likely to crap out unexpectedly due to say condensation in an enclosed environment where people are exhaling water vapor.

You might generally be fine, but many crash investigation involved some cheap component failing as part of a longer sequence. Ie something fails and humidity increases then XYZ fails until eventually your margin of safety is gone and everyone dies.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#152

Post by stickfigure »

gs17 wrote: post #137
stickfigure wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Surfacing" unassisted would mean floating with the top of the submarine at water level. You still won't be able to open the door.

That's possible. Then at least some form of ventilation usable after surfacing should have been included if you're locking people in.

Every thruhull is a potential source of death at 5000+ psi.

The bigger problem seems like underinvestment in "getting found" technology.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#153

Post by realjhol »

prova_modena wrote: post #14
Solvency wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be a name for this kind of phenomenon. I am smart enough to know that I'm too dumb and ill-equipped to make a safe tourism business out of a homebrewed submarine. These people are smarter than me, but too stupid to know that they aren't smart enough to make a safe tourism business out of a homebrewed submarine.

Dunning-Kruger effect.

Did you know the Dunning-Kruger effect isn't real?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/2020...

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#154

Post by Retric »

ethbr0 wrote: post #51
addaon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and what would that change? Suitability for purpose. Some obvious ones: Defined and validated environmentals (temperature, voltage, and in this case pressure). Qualified components — capacitors chosen for lifetime rather than shaving a cent, perhaps avoidance of MEMS oscillators with helium sensitivity. Failure analysis. Low and understood probability of fail-unsafe conditions (short circuit), mitigation for those…

Yes, if one had the budget to do all those things, from scratch, better than an existing component manufacturer. Not many companies have NASA levels of "throw money at it until it works, and every part has been signed off on five times." Absent that, I'm having trouble seeing how custom > COTS. In all probability, anything in-house would have been worse and added new failure modes. Better to buy, analyze, and adapt a…

Not all COTS are equal. There are plenty of off the shelf controllers built for boats that are designed to handle wet environments such as might be found in an enclosed space where people are exhaling water vapor etc. They don’t however cost 30$ nor do they cost anything close to the R&D required to make an equivalent product.

Of note they might not have condensation in normal conditions, but condensation is exactly the kind of thing that results in cascading failures when just one seemingly minor thing fails.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#155

Post by SoftTalker »

ploika wrote: post #134
JDW1023 wrote: post #17

> According to the BBC, the entire sub is bolted shut from the outside, so even if the vessel surfaces, the occupants cannot escape without outside assistance and could suffocate within the capsule. Why is the submarine bolted shut from the outside?

Bit of a tangent maybe, but according to some expert I heard on the radio this morning, it's a submersible and not a submarine precisely because the vehicle is so totally dependant on the support ship. That includes everything from communication to getting in and out.

It's dependant on a support ship but it's not tethered to it? Maybe depth prohibits that?

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#156

Post by timbit42 »

pengaru wrote: post #103

Do we know anything about how many times this submersible has survived descending to such depths? Surely its been sent down to dwell at these depths autonomously dozens if not hundreds of times, right?

CBS News correspondent David Pogue said 20 to 25 drives in an interview with CBC earlier today.

https://youtu.be/q-6jjy3estY?t=338

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#158

Post by anigbrowl »

rwmj wrote: post #46

There's a BBC documentary from last year which I just watched: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fpz9zw and honestly a lot of it seems quite amateur hour. One of the steering motors was fitted backwards. When they discovered this, at the bottom of the ocean and a few hundred feet from Titanic, the solution they used was to hold the gamepad at right angles to compensate. That time they proceeded with the tour and mad…

How do you not test this at the bottom of a harbor rather than in prod.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#159

Post by klabb3 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #141
klabb3 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is (was) a money maker at all. There’s a clip on YouTube where they invited a CBS journalist to join. The CEO, to me, seems like a passionate dreamer who definitely 100% ate his own dog food (ie took huge personal risk). He was onboard this likely final voyage. They didn’t make any profit, at least back then. It’s obviously incredibly expensive and near-impossible to scale such an operation. Look,…

VCs are all about finding someone with a genuine passion and pushing enormous expectations of profit onto them.

The enormous profiteering of deep ocean exploration is certainly an interesting angle, but I highly doubt it. If you want money from that, I think you’d want to be a military contractor instead, or consult for offshore oil. A $250k “leisure” trip to titanic would be an… unusual anniversary gift.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#160

Post by leni536 »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #131
Strom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logitech has orders of magnitude more experience in manufacturing peripherals than Microsoft. That said, Logitech does make products in a wide price range and the low end isn't competitive with their own high end.

The article mentions that this gamepad was released in 2010, but also it's just a slight iteration on Logitech's Wireless RumblePad 2, a wireless version of the RumblePad 2 released around 2004. The newer models just add X-input, change the button faces from 1234 to ABXY, and made the wireless receiver smaller.

I still have my rumblepad 2, it is a fine controller. Why they would use wireless here is beyond me however.
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