Logitech has orders of magnitude more experience in manufacturing peripherals than Microsoft. That said, Logitech does make products in all price ranges and the low end isn't competitive with their own high end.

FWIW, I'd estimate that Microsoft has sold something like 200 million Xbox controllers.

To be fair, Microsoft also sold a lot of Xboxes that were misdesigned from a thermal perspective, and thus red ringed themselves.

The thermals weren't misdesigned exactly, but the solder was below expected performance in several key attributes. It is not the only product that got screwed by new leadfree solder being not the best at the time.

"Low end" and "high end" in the gaming market doesn't necessarily equate to "reliability," however. "Style" and "customizability" are very high on the differentiators between low/high for gaming peripherals, neither of which are necessary on a sub.

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.

It’s not about having a RGB controller, it’s the fact you can get a COTS controller built for boats which is vastly less likely to crap out unexpectedly due to say condensation in an enclosed environment where people are exhaling water vapor.

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.

The bigger issue is that it's a handheld controller, and looks wireless.

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?

Sure, but the headlines are always "$30 video game controller" or "low-end videogame controller", not "videogame controller". I agree that that's the real problem, that using a videogame controller for life-or-death control is a bad idea, but I'm just peeved by the headlines that seem more upset that the videogame controller being used is inexpensive, and seem to insinuate that if they'd used an XBox Elite controller, maaaaybe that'd have been okay.

The article mentions that this gamepad was released in 2010, but also it's just a slight iteration on Logitech's Wireless RumblePad 2, a wireless version of the RumblePad 2 released around 2004.

The newer models just add X-input, change the button faces from 1234 to ABXY, and made the wireless receiver smaller.

I still have my rumblepad 2, it is a fine controller. Why they would use wireless here is beyond me however.

Yeah, the wireless is not good. My initial thought on the headline was Logitech's F310 controller which is wired and missing rumble, but besides that basically identical.

Logitech has a lot of experience, i give you that. My MX518 lasted over 10 years, many other owners reported the same. More recent products by them die often before five years of use. Perverse incentives, news at 11. Sorry for the snark.

I've replaced the 518 with a g300 (I think) and while it was a good mouse, it broke down way too quick for my liking. Now a happy user of a deathadder hyperspeed.

The mx518 (and mx400 before it) were godlike but the newer stuff has been distinctly mediocre.

I had to return a mx master 3 after a year when the left click button wore out.

> Logitech has orders of magnitude more experience in manufacturing peripherals than Microsoft.

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.

I have both a Logitech Gamepad and Logitech headset that are going ~15 years no issues. I wound up setting aside one of the MX mice after like a decade so I could have a mouse that had sensitivity buttons. It's my daily driver on my work system still.

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.

From what I've seen Logitech stuff is next to indestructible (believe me I've tried).

Unfortunately, the cables on their newer headphones are made of the crappiest rubber possible. That part annihilated itself incredibly quickly.

Other than the mouse clickers going bad in about a year 4 times in a row...

there’s a logitech bluetooth silent mouse i really like and would carry it on my laptop at work from meeting room to meeting room. i had 3 in 2 years, dropped each once, they were all broken on the first fall.

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.

Well my G500s is working fine for last 10.

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.

Even high end Logitech peripherals aren't exactly great. I bought a Logitech wireless keyboard with backlighting a few years ago. It was nice but there was some hardware bug and when not in use the lights would be flashing all day and night until the batteries run out [0]. I certainly hope their gamepads are more energy efficient than that!

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/LogitechG/comments/pt0fkp/logitech_...

I have the same keyboard (MX Keys). I didn't have the flashing-light problem, but the lights nevertheless would constantly turn themselves off, after a very short (~5s?) period of inactivity.

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.

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.

This type/class of wireless controllers are noticeably less dense and flimsier. They are not necessarily built worse, but this is "get what you pay for" product, which is to say it's great for undergraduate robotics projects that Microsoft or Sony designs at ~$65 is either an overkill or too complicated to interface with.

I think I've seen Microsoft selling Logitech devices with Microsoft logos on them.

Hey at least it's not a madcatz controller!

Throwback! They were great for cheap controllers.

> and what would that change?

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.

Yes, if one had the budget to do all those things, from scratch, better than an existing component manufacturer.

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.

If you can't afford to qualify the components on your 4000m diving vehicle, you can't afford to make a 4000m diving vehicle.

See: the fact that they lost their diving vehicle.

Pressure hull >> ballast control >> thrusters >> everything else

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.

> That's an awful lot of keyboard engineering, given nobody knows what happened yet.

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.

I'm also annoyed at the company for all the public emergency resources being forced to help rescue this contraption.

Budgets are unfortunately a zero sum game, and I have to wonder if there are much more obvious ways to save lives more efficiently with the amount of money it’s costing the US government to undertake a massive and technically complex search for 5 people.

If you're going to go down that route, please direct it at the cost of the US military's unfathomably high spending.

There's capital and then operational costs.

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.

I thought about this, and came to the conclusion that the coastguard and especially military see it as a good opportunity to test their equipment and procedures for real.

And seafarers have a strong code of ethics about helping other seafarers.

As long as they aren't brown.

Whilst I agree, and I hope the vessel had adequate insurance for such an eventuality, it's a excellent "training" exercise.

Real world scenarios which don't involve any enemy combatants are invaluable to keep everyone at peak readiness

It's also a little annoying to hear their lead adviser, David Concannon, complain about government moving too slowly: https://youtu.be/nW3r01_ZWmY

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.

Yes. "Missing"

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.

The fact that they can’t even find it is in part because they didn’t outfit it with any capability to send a distress signal. They lost it multiple times but never added a radio beacon or anything.

Sonar beacon. Radio is useless underwater.

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.

Couldn't you have a beacon that detaches from the vehicle, floats up to the surface and transmits the signal from there?

You'd need to carry 4km of cable with you

AKA an EPIRB: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_...

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.

It's possible that it's floating just under the surface, in which case the radar reflectors won't help. Radar also isn't necessarily _great_ at finding anything bobbing in waves, as water will itself reflect radar.

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.

They claim the vehicle has consumables to last 4 days, so while it’s a little premature at 3 days in to declare it’s over, if you have an injured person that requires an EMT and the ambulance won’t get there until the situation devolves…

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.

"Everyone involved knew what they were getting into."

Did they? I might have missed that part.

>> OceanGate says it is an experimental vessel, and when CBS travelled onboard the correspondent had to sign a waiver accepting that it "has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65960217

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=29co_Hksk6o

When you get right down to it, the people who boarded this submersible on Sunday probably didn’t want to die. No matter what waiver they signed.

nobody wants to die ('cept for people looking to suicide). The waiver is an acknowledgement that what they're doing is dangerous, and could cause them to die. As an adult, you have the right to accept this risk, if the reward for doing so is worth it in your eyes.

Unless, of course, if those signing the waivers were mislead.

Yes, but the waiver probably didn't say 'you have at least a 10% chance of dying'.

You're going almost 4000m underwater.

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.

>>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.

There's a difference between a well prepared Everest expedition and someone selling a submarine experience in a poorly designed craft. There is a difference between inherently dangerous activity and wanton stupidity.

Actually there's a huge backlash to guided "adventure" tours bringing rich tourists who have zero business being above 7000m into the death zone. Everest was bad enough (it's at least not a technically difficult climb) but now they've expanded to K2, which is absolutely insane to send an amateur to.

When I go scuba diving I also need to sign a waiver and acknowledge the inherent risk of the activity.

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.

I had a colleague who went scuba diving in Los Angeles. Newly wed. Husband and Wife, decide to spend their 4th of July weekend doing water sports.

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.

Was he just taking his wife down without training and certification?

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.

Your story is probably incomplete. I am no scuba diving expert but I know people who do it regularly. You never do it alone. And you constantly check others in case they need help. There's a whole sign language around just checking status. And protocols for things like sharing oxygen etc.

And there's a whole certification process around it too. I wonder how they got their gear and if they had a guide/instructor. Those are the more pertinent points of the story when trying to relate it to the sub story.

I've experienced dive shops, which were rather flexible with their approach to paperwork and certification (learn diving! no swimming required! is a giveaway).

But since this trategy apparently happened in LA that's just unfathomable.

As a certified diver, this is very hard to accept. Others have written about losing the mask as being exactly one of the things you train for, and that's true, but in addition to that.... where the hell was the husband while she was struggling???? was he also completely untrained? wasn't there at least one instructor or at least a certified diver with them, if the husband wasn't?

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.

I'm pretty sure you can't have people sign away your reasonable duty of care, only inherent risks.

> Everyone involved knew what they were getting into.

Did they?

my guess is no. purely speculation on my part, but my suspicion is that the dangers were downplayed and the sales/marketing people paid the bare minimum attention to how close this was to a backyard project.

“we wouldn’t charge you $250,000 if we weren’t serious.”

>Everyone involved knew what they were getting into.

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?

If they said they were, and I did, presumably.

So, “no”

Well, I am carrying a parachute and getting out halfway, so if they can land is not my concern…

> Kudos to them for trying, even if they're dead.

A kid jumps from a cliff and dies. Thought it could fly (by some quirk of nature perhaps). Turns out, not true. Died on impact. Kudos for trying? Hardly. It's a bad idea. No matter if the outcome is not a total disaster by sheer luck.

Those situations are really not comparable. Jumping off a cliff has a near 100% death rate. This sub on the other hand has done this before.

A better comparison might be climbing mount everest in the 80s.

Okay maybe betteer to compare diving in a janky sub to jumping oit of a plane with a tablecloth for parachute

> Everyone involved knew what they were getting into.

I'm sure everyone involved was expert on industrial design and were clued into what exact costs were cut /s

> If you can't afford to qualify the components on your 4000m diving vehicle

... which you are taking paying passengers with

This is not necessarily the case. For many people it's worth the risk of death to do cool things (e.g. climb Mount Everest).

What these people did, is like if you climbwd mound everest and died because they forgot to pack any food, you oxygen doesnt work becauae it's a $10 canister from best-buy, and your tent has holes in it.

Its not what tou did, its how you did it.

Absent engineering, an engineered solution is no better than COTS, agreed.

Absent engineering, people die unnecessarily.

Trade offs.

They were charging a quarter million per head. Budget should not have been a concern.

Also using close to $1m in fuel per trip (according to the CEO), not that it changes your point

Not doubting you, but how is that possible? (A quick, unverified Google throws back "A standard Panamax containership has operational costs of about $9 million per year")

Also a large private jet uses about 540 gallons of fuel per hour. That’s very roughly $5400/h in air

Those use cheap diesel.

What sort of fuel do you use underwater?

electricity. which you probably got from cheap diesel in a generator on your carrier ship.

I really don't see how that is possible.

Maybe they fill it up with solid gold to sink and then drop it all into the ocean as they ascend

HODL

don't do this

I saw (probably) the same video and thought he was saying the company's lifetime fuel costs were $1M.

Not all COTS are equal. There are plenty of off the shelf controllers built for boats that are designed to handle wet environments such as might be found in an enclosed space where people are exhaling water vapor etc. They don’t however cost 30$ nor do they cost anything close to the R&D required to make an equivalent product.

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.

You’re conducting a technical analysis that overlooks the legal analysis around fitness for a particular purpose.

It many companies are going places NASA fears to tread. 12000 feet is pretty fucking deep. That’s why the wreck took so long to find in the first place.

I get using COTS but the decisions for this submarine would indicate that they have no grasp of the concept of failure modes.

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.

NASA isn't producing in-house, they still source from third parties. So, if you want, or need, something from scratch, you pay for the development and industrialisation and then for the parts. And those suppliers are quote often the same ones as they are for the COTS stuff.

NASA gets all that done on $28Bn/year.

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.

>Microsoft very certainly did a tons of reliability and durability testing on their controllers (and it shows).

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.

I've lost two 360 controllers, one started freaking out on the inputs and the other one's right analog stick just chipped off one day

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.

Absolutely. Former avionics company employee here - not only do companies like Collins have COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products to buy, but they themselves are frequently made of at least some COTS components. So each of those components have been tested and put into production by a company who's laser focused on the safety and reliability of that part.

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.

Apollo 1 has been too long ago. Collective memory fades. Each generation seems to need its own disasters to keep its safety standards up.

The general public does, for those in the respective fields those safety lessons are ingrained in proper procedures and constititional knowledge. That's why start-ups in those fields are risky, usually their founders have never witnessed said procedures and knowledge at work, never worked under those procedures. Employees, especially early on, tend to be young an inexperienced as well. As a result, those companies neither have the constitiational knowledge nor the processes of their more mature counter part. Some try up make for this with "hacker" culture...

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.

Institutional Knowledge needs to preserved and maintained once developed.

I imagine we'll see some of the large-cap tech companies dealing with this very soon.

> 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.

If you were to believed the movies, the Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS Flight Stick is the most common input method on any flying vehicle. :)

It is a good stick tho

It is indeed :) I upgraded mine to the VKB Gunfighter Ultimate, as it allows for much less stress on your arm and fingers, but kept the Throttle.

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.

I thought both companies started making mice at about the same time.

Logitech is more experienced in making money by selling crappy devices that fail on you right after the warranty expired.

I mostly agree but my knee-jerk concern is mostly what's not the controller. The USB port, the driver, the operating system, and the computer.

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.

The Xbox Elite 2 controller costs $150 and is a reliability nightmare. It has the look and feel of a premium product, but there are at least three components that are commonly reported breaking after fairly light use (like, after 100 hours of gaming). Analog stick drift, shoulder buttons that register duplicate presses, and face buttons (usually the A) that stop registering presses. All of these issues are still unfixed years after release.

Given that's what their flagship controller is like, they either don't do a lot of reliability testing or are ignoring the results.

As an amateur EE, using mass market is a braindead idea in this case.

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.

Logitech has even more experience than Microsoft in doing controllers

You would think that but the Nintendo Switch controller still has analog stick drift many years after being discovered.

Also assuming that weight isn't an issue, the controller being $30 makes redundancy easy. Just like every other kid playing video games, simply have a second one in case the first one fails.

It's small, cheap and replaced in seconds.

It's also wireless. Do they have an easy way of pairing a new controller?

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.

> 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?).

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.

> Microsoft very certainly did a tons of reliability and durability testing on their controllers

I don't think they tested them 2.5 miles underwater though. Even if the cabin is pressurized, electronics can behave differently there.

the logitech controller has a switch to change between direct input / x-input

> (and it shows)

bought two official xbox controllers and they both broke within six months so…