Question. Who are they actually suing? Didn’t the bozo die along with everyone else? So who would hold responsibility?
It appears they are suing OceanGate, the company that made the submarine. The use of cheap, consumer grade hardware for critical functions (literally controlling the sub) is one of their criticisms.
I don’t see why the controller is a problem.
If you go out and custom-make a controller, it’s not likely going to be more reliable than anything that Logitech makes.
Yeah, but if you’re going to use a wireless controller, don’t fucking skimp and get some cheapo device, at least buy a goddamned 1st party controller. Not that MS/Sony don’t have lemons too, but Logitech controllers are like a half step from the crappy MadKatz controllers from my childhood.
This had to be a project costing somewhere in the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, and they’re trying to save $30 on an aftermarket controller?!? That’s the literal embodiment of Penny Wise, pound foolish.
That’s only assuming the sub was running windows, where Xbox controllers work out of the box. On Linux there are no first party drivers, and Bluetooth support on the 1/S controllers simply didn’t exist at the time this happened. If it was an embedded system there would be no support whatsoever.
Behind the Bastards did a pretty great two-parter on Stockton Rush, and how a) he completely shit the bed while ignoring all the super-deep-exploration experts, and b) how nature was totally telegraphing to Rush and OceanGate that this submersible is totally not doing it and will end in a spectacular tragedy, only no one else will be down there to watch but the fishes.
The controller wasn’t a particularly weak link, though for safety’s sake I’d want there to be a redundant spare, and it set up for plug and play. But higher on my priority list would be things like integrity monitors and an emergency way to open the sub from the inside (the hatch was bolted from the outside, and there were no emergency exit measures.
To be fair, they all exited the vehicle pretty quickly at the time without it needing to be unbolted from the outside. Experts… pfft.
Such bad taste, sir. Have a reluctant upvote for that absolutely crushing wit.
Since the story came out people fixated on “lol he used a shitty gaming controller” but really that is one of the least sketchy design choices in the entire rig. Why reinvent the wheel and make a custom set of controls that are realistically another huge expense and potential failure point, when off the shelf solutions exist for that component?
The corners that were cut are the ones involving the viewport/nose adhesion to the ships frame, and the structural integrity of the carbon fiber hull itself. They had test data suggesting it was a bad idea to engage in repeated dives with their design, and an even worse idea to operate at the depths they chose. They decided to ignore that.
That doesn’t explain why they used the wireless version of that Logitech instead of wired to control the thing they were literally inside.
To be fair, they’re under water and sharks have been known to chew through electrical cables
I suspect the wired cabling would be to control components inside the sub, not outside. And I say that only because it’s unlikely that wireless signals would penetrate the sub walls.
Too dense to pick up on the obvious sarcasm, I see.
“That doesn’t explain why they used the wireless version of that Logitech instead of wired to control the thing they were literally inside.”
Yes, that sarcasm is profound and deep.
In case my implied message is unclear, go fuck yourself.
using a wireless controller to manage life critical functions is the acme of stupidity.
The game controller is not managing life critical functions, that’s called a computer. The game controller plugs into the computer. The great thing about that is that you can bring a second (or even a third) game controller for redundancy.
It’s just that the engineering choices that caused the failure are difficult to understand or communicate in sentence so the game controller is something any idiot can harp on about and sound smart.
