To be fair to them
I'm not sure it's quite as dodgy as it looks, inherent dodginess of going there at all notwithstanding.
Xbox controllers can take a lot of abuse and are probably more reliable than anything you could buy.
The main things with that sort of design are that the pressure vessel must be good and the ballast has to drop when you need to drop it.
Using scrap iron held on with electromagnets looks like a reasonable fail safe approach to me. Power goes, ballast drops and up you go.
Personally I wouldn't get in anything like that but the design doesn't seem crazy.
(, Tue 20 Jun 2023, 9:17, Reply)
The controller is the the part that particularly stood out to me.
That's a Logitech F710 that they're using. It seems like a terrible choice in terms of redundancy, because there's no option to tether it via USB in the event that your batteries run out or the receiver packs in.
You'd like to think that they'd have a contingency plan in place for situations such as that, but looking at how cramped the vessel is, I suspect that their contingency doesn't extend much further than a spare set of batteries.
I'm sure there must be some kind of fuckit button or other emergency backup control measure, but choosing a controller that only has one method of communication as your primary input device seems a little short-sighted. Especially since the F710 already has a reputation for being sketchy in its native environment.
(, Tue 20 Jun 2023, 9:38, Reply)
To me the key thing was the ballast release
If they have done the sensible thing and just used an electromagnet then going up is just a matter of flipping a breaker, and loss of power makes you go up.
Assuming it was a magnet they used. Anything more complicated is asking for trouble.
Watching again did say it was a 1 button up/down thing so I'm wondering if the controller was just for cameras and minor maneuvering.
(, Tue 20 Jun 2023, 9:52, Reply)
my only concern about the design is the cylinder (composite) plus hemisphere (titanium) design for the pressure vessel where the front hemisphere has to be unbolted and rebolted to let people in
and the potential for error every time you do it
everything else I've seen that can dive to that depth has a spherical pressure vessel with a pressure sealed top hatch, but the maximum number of passengers for those is 3 instead of 5
(
custard, Tue 20 Jun 2023, 13:25,
Reply)
Seems like an obvious weak point
You’d better hope that the gasket is sound.
(
wheresthefish Partly filled with wrong, Tue 20 Jun 2023, 14:28,
Reply)