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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

#271

Post by WhereIsTheTruth »

dragontamer wrote: post #149
WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Consumer grade products aren't built to last, they are built to be cheap so they can sell them to actual consumers We all know how the military ends up using these consumer grade products; lobbying, aka deep state corruption "if that happens in…

> Consumer grade products aren't built to last, they are built to be cheap so they can sell them to actual consumers Video game gamepads are probably some of the most well designed pieces of equipment I know of, with each part having a guaranteed lifetime of clicks and/or swipes, and other such details. Video gamers are really obsessive over these details. It wouldn't be surprising to me if the latest hall-effect sen…

> The top end joysticks used in video game tournaments for maximum reliability are easily $200+.

Not the $30 Logitech controller, ever heard of joystick drift? plastic is plastic, imagine you in a mission, and your joystick starts to drift

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

#272

Post by ceejayoz »

reaperducer wrote: post #195
PokemonNoGo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those are the licensed deals.

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

#273

Post by peteradio »

gcanyon wrote: post #166

The more I read about this, the more it (sadly) reminds me of a bungie jumping accident years ago: the bungie cable contained many separate strands, all ending in loops. The habit of the operators was to hold all the loops together and pass a large carabiner through the bundle, catching a number of the loops. Until one time they caught few enough (none? I remember "none," but that seems absurd) that the whole thing f…

Lunacy yes but this behavior has been the norm for all of human history, this seems like a fairly reasonable attempt to do something great IMO. Go read Darwin awards and realize the incredibly stupid shit people do daily.

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

#274

Post by barrkel »

Strom wrote: post #19
tredre3 wrote: 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 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.

My work Logitech G502 wired mouse is in its 7th month of light use (only used on in-office days) and the cable has already split where it connects to the mouse.

Mass manufactured devices - particularly when they're mature - have the costs squeezed out of them to maximize profit. That means they ride the line close to failure to end of warranty.

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

#276

Post by busyant »

anigbrowl wrote: post #158
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.

my guess is that they did test in a shallow location, but ... not nearly enough unit tests.

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

#277

Post by c_o_n_v_e_x »

srmarm wrote: 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...

Military loves COTS. You've also got a user interface that many in the service would already be familiar with.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

gcanyon wrote: post #166

The more I read about this, the more it (sadly) reminds me of a bungie jumping accident years ago: the bungie cable contained many separate strands, all ending in loops. The habit of the operators was to hold all the loops together and pass a large carabiner through the bundle, catching a number of the loops. Until one time they caught few enough (none? I remember "none," but that seems absurd) that the whole thing f…

[deleted]

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

#279

Post by kamranjon »

HWR_14 wrote: post #246
kamranjon wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard an anecdote at one point that when a submarine depressurizes that deep, everything inside gets pushed through whatever hole caused the depressurization, like squeezing the contents out of a tube of toothpaste. Might have been from the Byford Dolphin accident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin "Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner…

That was a decompression event with high pressure air flowing out. If a submarine has a rupture that deep, it would go the other way, high pressure water coming in. Most likely, as soon as there was any break the whole thing would collapse in on itself. Picture yourself crushing an empty coke can between the two flat ends. It goes from intact and pretty strong to all of a sudden easy to push and crushed. In the event…

Ah interesting - thank you for the explanation! That is just about as terrifying I think.

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

#280

Post by aqme28 »

kamranjon wrote: post #215
nycdotnet wrote: post #110

With all the talk about failure modes of carbon fiber, the scariest part of this article is the photo of the display and light held up by screws drilled into the side of the pressure vessel.

I heard an anecdote at one point that when a submarine depressurizes that deep, everything inside gets pushed through whatever hole caused the depressurization, like squeezing the contents out of a tube of toothpaste. Might have been from the Byford Dolphin accident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin "Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner…

In this case the worry is implosion, not depressurization.
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