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...
That being said, the difference between a Microsoft controller and a third party is that Microsoft very certainly did a tons of reliability and durability testing on their controllers (and it shows). You don't get that with a cheap third party. So I can understand to a degree why people are questioning the decision to not pay the extra 20 bucks and get microsoft gear.
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 as frequently about ergonomic issues as they are about reliability. Every batch of controllers is going to have some unreliable ones, so the fact that that doesn't stand out as the common complaint dragging the reviews down says something.
A lot of the rest of the choices for the sub sound sus, but not bothering to splurge on a game controller that cycles RGB is not worthy of a headline, IMO.
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.
What happens if you drop it, it lands sticks-down, giving a sudden large control input to the thrusters? Given those stick extensions (which look 3D printed), the controls must be fairly sensitive?
Or if the wireless connection drops out (or the battery dies) when you're close to a shipwreck or other hazard that you don't want to get entangled in?
The newer models just add X-input, change the button faces from 1234 to ABXY, and made the wireless receiver smaller.
I had to return a mx master 3 after a year when the left click button wore out.
You know that saying that anybody can build a bridge, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands? From what I've seen and heard, Logitech has used their experience to make peripherals that barely last longer than the warranty/return period.
FWIW my 22 year old optical intellimouse from Microsoft is still going strong.
Maybe those changes are recent but IME you've always had to figure out which are the quality lines of product from any peripheral manufacturer. I've seen dozens of the cheapo Logitech headsets broken and tossed over the years both at work and among friends. Meanwhile my G35 headset bought in 2009 has required two sets of replacement cushions in that time and still works great.
Even MS back in the Sidewinder days had their warts -- their gamepad was complete garbage while their Joystick was awesome (I still have mine).
I think GP's overall point though that peripherals like this aren't exactly unsuitable shouldn't be ignored. There's a huge advantage to something inexpensive that you can cheaply carry replacement parts for or whole replacement devices for. Once you go fly by wire (or dive by wire I guess in this case) it's not clear to me what advantage there is in designing your own bespoke system.
kinda wish they were able to withstand falls onto hard surfaces but it’s also a) my fault, and b) not an expectation i have of a mouse in general.
but it’s also a good reason to not just take any consumer device onto a sub, because functioning after a drop would absolutely be a requirement.
Also that controller is getting like 1/50th of use it would get under normal gamer so that's insanely weird detail to focus on.
I'd also imagine dropping ballast would need a controller in the first place.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/LogitechG/comments/pt0fkp/logitech_...
I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time trying to find a fix, including removing an internal cable and putting electrical tape over the top. Nothing worked. The closest I got was keeping the wireless keyboard plugged into its USB-C charger so that the timeout period before shutoff was longer than it was in battery-only mode.
All of which is annoying, because it's not cheap (>$100), and the fix is so stupefyingly simple - an addition of one or two settings in the configuration software. And, yes, countless people have reported this to Logitech and their 'support' consists, at best, of saying "I'll pass this on to The Team".
Never have I been more tempted to go all-in and become a firmware hacker, though the feasibility in time and probability of success are both quite low.
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.
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 risks, fume-proof and fire-proof PCB materials to protect the sealed environment in case of failure.
Redundancy to handle failures anyway. Multiple independent strings so that single-point failure lead to partial loss of lighting, not all of it.
Load ahedding, eg dropping all but one string at a known voltage above minimum voltage, to save power for other more critical loads during system failure scenarios.
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 as needed.
And if it turns out you don't need to adapt, because failure modes aren't safety-critical or components are viable in the environment, then spend your time on something more useful.
What sort of fuel do you use underwater?
Absent engineering, people die unnecessarily.
Trade offs.
See: the fact that they lost their diving vehicle.
I'm not sure why everyone is taking potshots at a company for trying something crazy with willing passengers.
Everyone involved knew what they were getting into.
Kudos to them for trying, even if they're dead.
> See: the fact that they lost their diving vehicle.
That's an awful lot of keyboard engineering, given nobody knows what happened yet.
Did they? I might have missed that part.
Unless, of course, if those signing the waivers were mislead.
What percent should it have said? 10%? 5%? 30%? 90%?
Anything other than "We've tried to make it safe, but there's a lot higher than 0% chance of death" would seem a lie.
People die climbing Everest regularly, and I don't see anyone claims the climbing industry is under-disclosing.
Because these are inherently lethal activities, that a reasonable participant engages in despite knowing the risks.
One can as far as say they indulge in it for the 'kick' this sort of risk brings. The ordinary is boring for most of these people. They don't want to have fun the same some one making $90K/yr does.
It doesn't mean that the regulator provided by the dive center is McGivered with duct tape and chewing gum. Which seems like the equivalent of the construction and the components quality of that vessel.
So they go scuba diving, the wife's mask breaks down, he comes up, she panics she doesn't. She died by drowning. He was totally broken, the wife knew the risks and he knew it too. Nevertheless he wanted her to try because he thought it was fun. He lived with the trauma for years. Probably now as well.
People don't know how bad these things can get. This sort of fun, is definitely not worth anyones life. Just go sight seeing, and have Sundae at Ghirardelli. There are many safe ways of having fun, that don't involve death as a risk factor.
This just seems insane.
While losing a mask or having it break down is very inconvenient that's exactly one of the scenarios you train for.
Even when doing the Open Water certification one of the skills you must do to get certified is to remove your mask, put it on again and remove the water from it.
> This sort of fun, is definitely not worth anyones life.
I agree. And that's the exact reason why you train for extraordinary situations and get certified.
Scuba diving is a safe sport as long you adhere to the rules and your personal limitations.
But since this trategy apparently happened in LA that's just unfathomable.
Every place I have ever been to wants to see my certification before allowing me to rent gear, I guess for insurance and legal liability purposes.
Unless I'm mistaken, the subject article starts with the words "Submarine missing". The fact that the whole thing was jury rigged and double checked by nobody with certifications is enough to start pointing fingers at the engineers.
This isn't the company's first trip either. They've taken multiple trips down and have almost lost the submarine multiple times. This time they actually managed to lose it for good.
The reason people are mad at the company is because their negligence killed 4 people for no good reason.
If a Coast Guard ship heads out of St. John's or a Navy aircraft/ship/submarine transits to the area, they burn fuel but already existed with all their trained personnel.
So most of the cost is moving things into position. Expensive, but the asset probably would have been moving somewhere anyway.
And seafarers have a strong code of ethics about helping other seafarers.
As long as they aren't brown.
Real world scenarios which don't involve any enemy combatants are invaluable to keep everyone at peak readiness
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/oceangate-...
He's representing a company that took safety shortcuts because government regulations slow innovation, but is also complaining that the government isn't helping them quickly enough in this search.
He thanks the governments, but says they need to move faster. As an adviser, he should be telling this company to have a better emergency plan.
Assuming it sunk, it'll be order of week before it's found. It'll be order of month before it's raised, if it can be. And then after analysis we might know why it sunk.
+60 hours after lost contact, while there are possibly still people alive inside the vehicle, seems premature and crass to be casting accusations for internet points.
It reportedly has radar reflectors and radio, for when it's on the surface.
At 3800 m+ underwater, it'd need to be a powerful beacon. Even most military sonar maxes out around half that.
You can buy one for a few hundred bucks, but based on everything I've read about this outfit so far, I'd be surprised if they even had that.
Additionally, if the problem was a power outage then the radio also might not work unless it had a separate power supply.
Emergency beacons cost a few hundred dollars and are designed for this purpose, not having one is pure negligence.
If they're on the bottom of the ocean then even if they're found a rescue is unlikely to happen in time.
In these situations you don’t do everything you can because it will change the outcome. You do everything you can so that someday soon you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror while you brush your teeth. So you can sleep at night.
I haven’t been in this bad of a situation, but I’ve been in plenty where people second guessed themselves or someone else for years even decades after. Everyone has to get to “enough” on their own terms or it festers.
So we are letting a bunch of people figure it out. If a miracle happens, awesome. But unless they’re all trance meditating down there and have Wim Hoff hypothermia training it’s not good.
Did they?
“we wouldn’t charge you $250,000 if we weren’t serious.”
Not necessarily. For extreme sports like skydiving, bungee jumping, hang-gliding scuba and the like customers still expect a high level of adherence to safety and quality products and certifications exist. Would you want to parachute off an uncertified plane with an un-licensed pilot and inexperienced jumper?
I'm sure everyone involved was expert on industrial design and were clued into what exact costs were cut /s
... which you are taking paying passengers with
Its not what tou did, its how you did it.
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.
Decisions like using a 3rd party controller (known to be terrible), a wireless controller (introducing a lot of extra risk from batteries to connection problems), and a door that cannot be opened from the inside (what if they get lost but manage to surface?) are all very sus.
There's a huge list of companies that have that much revenue.
In some cases, it doesn't matter, but we shouldn't use cash as an excuse to cut corners with safety and reliability.
my xbox elite controller didn't even last a year (usb port died)... now tbf the x button on the replacement razer controller i got also died in the same time frame.
to be more fair though the wired xbox 360 controller i got with my original xbox back in ~2007 has never let me down.
https://www.collinsaerospace.com/what-we-do/industries/busin...
These are still COTS products.
You only need to spend a little time with a reliability engineer and see some of the calculations they do to start realizing how when even one or two components in a system have little corners cut, how it can drastically impact the overall safety of the system.
With the amount of corners cut on this submarine, I am unfortunately less than surprised at both the failure in the article and the crisis happening to it right now.
I hope all the souls aboard can somehow get home safe, and I hope the people who put them into this seemingly corners-cut vessel do not get to float any more craft, and that they didn't undersell the riskiness of this venture... although I'm unfortunately not optimistic about any of that.
Those things are valid for everything from med tech to aerospace and, yes, cars. The dangerous thing so, and I saw that in real life, is when that culture spreads. Usually through juniors who gained their first experience in said start-ups, and not one of those legacy shops.
Edit: None of what I wrote prevents legacy giants from cutting corners themselves, the B737 MAX showed us as much.
I imagine we'll see some of the large-cap tech companies dealing with this very soon.
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.
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.
All of that worries me at a glance, but I absolutely have no awareness of the options in this space or what can be done to mitigate risks re: reliability.
Given that's what their flagship controller is like, they either don't do a lot of reliability testing or are ignoring the results.
The controller is not built to deal with high humidity which I assume is a given in this kind of sub.
Another reason is that these devices are built out of very cheap components and are not at all designed to be reliable. You can easily design a controller that is much more reliable.
Having your multi million dollar sub grounded because you allowed a cheap component on board is pretty stupid imo.
It's small, cheap and replaced in seconds.
Third party controllers never work quite as well.
Using something off the shelf is completely fine, but it doesn't get you off the hook from doing the work of certifying that it's safe and fit for purpose. If you've ever used a modern game controller (even ones made by Microsoft), many of them are prone to issues with the potentiometer which causes the joysticks to drift subtly in one or more directions. Not ideal for controlling life critical systems.
I don't think they tested them 2.5 miles underwater though. Even if the cabin is pressurized, electronics can behave differently there.
bought two official xbox controllers and they both broke within six months so…
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/steam-deck-controls-a-real...
Edit: consumer joysticks normally use potentiometers, which aren't great for deadzones/drift. For things like dust incursion reasons along it would make sense for any industrial/military device to be using hall effect based joysticks.
In any case, I would hope they brought a spare (or had an alternative method to drive, even if cumbersome), as easy spares is one of the selling points of COTS parts (and long as you verify it's the real part and isn't a revision that looks the same invalidating your testing).
the really strange part of that, is that the pilot was the CEO of the company. Like the Norfolk Southern CEO would never in a million years set foot on one of their trains of death.
Anyhow they now heard sounds in 30minute intervals, so looks like they are still alive down there.
In a 2022 interview with CBC, Rush added the Bluetooth game controllers were durable — “it’s meant for a 16 year old to throw it around,” he said, tossing the controller to the floor — and that they kept spares on board “just in case.”
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/06/20/video-game-co...
Also, the controllers appear to be only to control the periscope. Which is not a critical component of this submarine. Everybody is fixating on them, but that's not what caused them to sink/get lost. It was probably the rest of the shoddy engineering.
But he also mentioned a touch screen when talking about the controller so I bet that they can use the touchscreen to control the submarine as well.
Still most likely cause of failure is that the viewport failed and they died immediately.
COTS stuff is awesome, but it doesn't absolve you from having proper procedures in place and knowing what those procedures should be in the first place.
The one used on the missing submersible does use Bluetooth.
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.
In point of fact they are not. The PS5 controller has poor battery life and both have stick drift issues because they use cheap analogue sensors. The current generation of Nintendo controllers are similar: stick drift and battery issues are common. And then there are issues with wireless interference which can be a serious problem and, when it is, difficult to diagnose and fix. I don't think the Logitech controller in question even has wired as an option though of course I have no idea if that's relevant to the incident at all.
Commercial off the shelf pc? What kind of redundancy? How was power and power backup managed?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClkytJa0ghc&t=33s
If I had to take a random guess, this system is probably some form of an embedded Atom/Geode type device (if not just a notebook PC) with some CAN or RS485/422/232 interfaces attached via USB.
It sounds like the screens could be used as backup control mechanisms, but I wonder how much time they'd lose making that transition.
To control periscopes (“photonics masts”), and some other equipment, not for primary control of manned vehicles, that I can find any indication of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Mouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Logitech_products
Most people would refuse to play a video game with this controller, let alone use it as a critical component in a vehicle. Joystick drift in a videogame is frustrating. Joystick drift in a fucking submarine is a disaster waiting to happen.
Definitely wouldn't trust it for a submarine though.
Although, for some reason, it's currently sold-out everywhere.
Anyway, my point is, I wouldn’t necessarily look down on a Logitech controller. Now if it were MadCatz….
Also keep in mind that the X56, X52 Pro, and X52 weren't Logitech either. Logitech bought out Saitek which was the original vendor and at least at first glance they haven't updated the designs in over a decade.
I'd rather have the more accurate Gladiator without a throttle over the terribly imprecise X56.
At this point, I probably have about $900 sunk into Virpil controls. The Alpha grip and base, the Mongoose throttle and an extra control panel I just ordered. Just absolutely love the feel and functionality.
It's just funny that the submarine, which went missing, and is now notorious for skimping on safety, went with a generic "third party" controller instead of something higher quality, like a genuine Xbox controller from Microsoft.
Also, COTS gear that's designed with a standard interface is by design trivial to replace even through hot swapping, which automatically means resilience against errors.
Thats thw kind of thing you have to test for
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 a foreign country"
Hololens didn't find commercial success, yet ended up with the military, soldiers weren't happy when it was time to use the actual consumer grade product ;)
> 'The devices would have gotten us killed.'
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/13/23402195/microsoft-us-ar...
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 sensor joypads are the best durability in the world for thumbpads.
That being said: a cheap Logitech controller would be an old potentiometer-based controller with far less durability. I'm sure if I asked around, someone out there knows the specifications and would know when to regularly replace that gamepad after X-hours of use (and I'd expect X-hours to be in excess of 1000 hours, maybe even 10,000+ hours, even for a gamepad like that)
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I think where video gamers are getting wow'd is that... they weren't using like a brand-name controller here. $30 Logitech is low-end. Video gamers know which controllers to rely upon.
Bottom of the barrel $30 Logitech is barely something I feel good about giving to a friend during a gaming session, let alone a life-or-death equipment choice for steering a submarine. You get far more reliable, higher-quality gamepads at the $50 or even $80 levels.
I don't think video gamers would be hating on these guys if they used... I dunno... an 8bitdo + GuliKit Hall Effect controller. We'd all be like "Oh yeah, that's quality stuff" (the Bluetooth is unreliable but I assume some kind of wired version is available somewhere...)
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
- fiction, obviously
I wish my friend whose mom bought him MadCatz controllers had your manners and sense of propriety.
They are so cheap you can carry a lot of spares. Controllers get pretty well abused by gamers, so they aren't exactly fragile.