There are far more worrisome things about this submersible than the controller used for steering.
Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
701–710 of 1001 posts
Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
#702There was a BBC special on this submarine, and it features that $30 Logitech gamepad extensively. At one point they were at the bottom of the sea and the gamepad just stops working, as in the mapping of the gamepad keys to the controls of the sub weren't working correctly. They were stuck spinning around in circles on the sea floor. The owner, on a boat in the middle of the ocean, had to call whoever it was that set…
Both of these videos went private apparently, I'd really like to see this doc.
Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
#703There was a BBC special on this submarine, and it features that $30 Logitech gamepad extensively. At one point they were at the bottom of the sea and the gamepad just stops working, as in the mapping of the gamepad keys to the controls of the sub weren't working correctly. They were stuck spinning around in circles on the sea floor. The owner, on a boat in the middle of the ocean, had to call whoever it was that set…
It says "private video".
Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
#704Earlier 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…
There's a middle ground between "hardware store crap" and "custom." The aviation industry has plenty of standard interior lighting and environmental control system that's known not to light people on fire or short out or otherwise fail and kill somebody. https://www.collinsaerospace.com/what-we-do/industries/busin... These are still COTS products.
> The aviation industry has plenty of standard interior lighting and environmental control system that's known not to light people on fire or short out or otherwise fail and kill somebody.
I am pretty sure the camper's equipment industry too. I haven't seen many occurence of campers burning out and in most case it was caused by people smoking in their camper or forgetting to turn off gas stove.
Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
#705One shall not obsess with the game controller they use, I suppose, in their analysis, failing the controller wouldn't prevent the sub from resurfacing... It is symptomatic, however. The whole Silicon Valley is like that. You have the old guard, NASA, millions for fault analysis, rumors go the C code on some NASA rocket was certified at $1000 per line---human eyeballs reading it... All those start-ups and unicorns, th…
Nothing has changed.
The reason NASA did that is because the stakes were so high. They couldn’t send a firmware update in the middle of a journey and the reputation of America hinged on the success of NASA.
If you are under that level of pressure, you make sure you dot your i’s and cross your t’s.
Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the most part (so no self-driving cars), startups are in a low-stakes game, so it makes sense to hack away, and it nas nothing to do with an "old guard." Google (or any other tech company) outages aren't particularly memorable unless you were an engineer involved in it. The space shuttle accidents were labeled "disasters."
Theranos? All those cases of neglected security when data leaked and/or people killed themselves over scams?
Theranos is an outright fraud. Not the product of getting things done on fast track.
They knew things could not be done and kept up the charade for long enough to profit off of it, and hopefully get away.
Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
#707The 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...
I mean the xbox and Playstation controllers are both actually really good, sturdy, reliable controllers; I'm sure a contractor could do "better" for whatever meaning of the word better for specialist cases like the military, but... why? If an xbox controller breaks, they can just pull out a new one.
War is as much about cost as it is about effective means of killing others. I can't say how much it's used because of a confirmation / media bias, but cheap drones are used effectively in Ukraine, plain commercial off the shelf drones (with matching controllers) with a bomb strapped to them taking out tanks and crews (who often leave their hatch open in the clips I've seen).
A few hundred bucks to take out a multi million tank sounds like a really good exchange.
Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
#708Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s cheap because it’s mass produced. If you asked for one you’d be charged for all the engineering, r&d and manufacturing for a one off. It would be a suitably expensive controller, but probably no higher quality. The cheap controller angle is noise in my opinion.
It’s cheap because if it breaks you just get a new one. A part for a vehicle needs more reliability than that so it costs more.
I’m not sure how an items cost can be determined by the action you might take after it breaks..
It costs what it costs because that’s how much it costs to make it and have a mark up on it. These factors are not a commentary on its durability, robustness or quality. Try as you might to find a correlation.
Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
#709There was a BBC special on this submarine, and it features that $30 Logitech gamepad extensively. At one point they were at the bottom of the sea and the gamepad just stops working, as in the mapping of the gamepad keys to the controls of the sub weren't working correctly. They were stuck spinning around in circles on the sea floor. The owner, on a boat in the middle of the ocean, had to call whoever it was that set…
It says "private video".
Ugh, I just watched them last night. I'll see if I can find another mirror. The show is "BBC Travel - Take Me to Titanic".
Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
#710The 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...
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…
I don’t trust playing games with third party controllers and to control a submarine with a 3rd-party control blows my mind.
Third party controllers never work quite as well.