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

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part most surprising to me was that there is no way to see out of the craft besides the camera system. Why not watch the video on land after the fact? It seems so senseless to endanger yourself as a participant.

There's a porthole in the front of the sub, where the toilet is. Funny enough, I've also seen "it doesn't even have a toilet" repeated around HN in the last couple days. IIRC an earlier design or planned design used cameras only. Edit: Wow, they were actually sued by a whistleblower over the pressure rating for the window on an earlier design! https://newrepublic.com/post/173802/missing-titanic-sub-face...

Yeah, I think I made a mistake when researching if it had a window. It clearly had one when the reporter went down last year.

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

#193
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There have been tethered submersions deeper than the titanic wreck.

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

#194
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was wondering how naval submarines work when they get in trouble. Naval subs in trouble? They go "forever on patrol." A naval sub is an espionage watercraft; signaling an emergency isn't exactly in the playbook for most of their mission cycle. ;)

The alternative is death of 134 odd people. Not ideal. :/ I would expect some e2e encryption satellite communication, however that might be still traceable to the enemy listening posts. Man, I now need to watch "Hunt for Red October" again [0]. lol [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C2tE7vjdHk

Its practically impossible to do satellite to undersea communications. Being underwater does all kinds of hell to RF signals. Even just reliably doing undersea to surface communications is pretty tricky.

Is your phone waterproof? Stick it a sink full of water. Watch it lose all network connectivity.

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

#195
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People - including politicians - have said for many years that the BBC should sell iPlayer subscriptions to international viewers, but they just...don't. They also have a massive archive of beloved content, enough to be a first-class streaming platform, but that stuff's not available even to UK residents.

Probably because with their current scheme they liscens the material for other markets and thus would be in violation of these kind of deals? As well as their co-funding/producing of foreign material. The question I would as as a liscense payer is what they earn through this. Not saying it's not possible but why it is quite the hard thing to get out of, and not spend liscens money while doing so, makes sense. I would…

liscens the material for other markets and thus would be in violation of these kind of deals?

Except that the BBC does it all the time.

You can watch lots of BBC content - even current stuff - in other countries.

ABC in Australia, and Acorn streaming or PBS OTA in the US.

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

#196
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing, the issue is who is buying and implementing it.

Exactly what's the issues, then?

buying wrong COTS components, ones that are not fit for intended purpose

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

#197
post #3

The US Navy uses an Xbox 360 controller in active service [0] Mass market has a lot of R&D to leverage so it makes sense. Nothing to say this is the cause of the fault and probably going to be more reliable than something hand rolled. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/19/16333376/us-navy-military...

xbox 360 controllers last only 6 months to a couple years with various failures that don't matter when you're playing a video game with them but can actually get you killed if they fail when you're in deep ocean. These are not ok for controls in vehicles where failure can mean everyone onboard dies. The navy does not use these for critical system controls. They were never built or tested for that.

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

#198
post #164
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally believe using mass market makes sense. I don't understand the criticism I've seen on this website for using off the shelf controllers or camping lights (what do you expect, an LED strip magically engineered by a large aeronautics firm specifically for the sub? and what would that change?). That being said, the difference between a Microsoft controller and a third party is that Microsoft very certainly di…

Logitech is a "cheap third party"? I like MS hardware, but my goodness, calling Logitech that is clearly missing something in the accuracy department. Logitech is way more experienced at making and selling input devices than MS.

I agree with you in principle on your defense of Logitech, but if there’s a company that can give Logitech a run for their money in terms of designing and selling input peripherals, it probably is Microsoft. There are very few extant input peripheral manufacturers that have been doing it as long or longer than Microsoft has, so it would be an overstatement to say they’re way more experienced”. Logitech has released to market more peripherals overall though since that’s pretty much their entire business.

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

#199
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part most surprising to me was that there is no way to see out of the craft besides the camera system. Why not watch the video on land after the fact? It seems so senseless to endanger yourself as a participant.

Serious? what about the "window" in the front?

window was in front of tourist toilet they had there, question is I'd they had enough flood lamps so that it was possible to see anything further than a meter away

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

#200
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…

It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. If they had encountered a program-destroying but non-catastrophic failure earlier on, it is possible we wouldn't be looking at one of the many horrific outcomes that this incident will likely resolve to.

Looking at the accounts reported to date, the OceanGate engineering culture was basically non-existent. Their test program was extremely lightweight to say the least, and the results that came back from what little hull testing they did do were ignored, resulting in the dismissal of an internal whistleblower [1]. We also learned that there were flammable materials within the pressure vessel, no practical contingency plan to speak of, no emergency beacon fitted, the list goes on. The whole thing was just cobbled together, not fully thought out or vetted, and yet the intent was to journey to one of the most unforgiving environments imaginable.

But getting back to the account of the reversed motor above -- it is one of the purest examples I can now think of where life imitates art. Piloting a stolen (but seaworthy) deep-sea submersible to the wreckage of the Titanic -- that was only able to make right-hand turns due to a "sub club" anti-theft device -- was a major plot point in the pilot episode of the TV series "Pinky and the Brain". Narf.

[1] https://newrepublic.com/post/173802/missing-titanic-sub-face...

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