US Navy swaps $38,000 periscope joysticks for $30 Xbox controllers (2017) | Hacker News Reader

US Navy swaps $38,000 periscope joysticks for $30 Xbox controllers (2017)

geekwire.com

23 pointsBrajeshwar16 comments

Now they could do 360 noscopes on russian submarines

Could Airbus replace the side stick with a $100 pc gaming joystick as well?

Is there a follow up article to this? Perhaps longevity, dependability and precision of the encoders is what sets $30 from $38k apart. Or maybe not.

Suddenly the durability of x-box controlers has become an issue of national security

I speculate national security concerns contributed a great deal to that $38,000 cost. How many servers with SSP and POAM documents were needed for its design to classified requirements, sysadmins with security clearances, and for classified manufacturing and delivery? I don't know, maybe submarine components are available at the navy surplus store. Let me know if you find any :-)

The new hotness in 2023-era gaming is Hall Effect joysticks, which apparently have infinite life (or at least, infinite compared to the old potentiometer joysticks of just a few years ago)

It makes sense that video gamers will push UI to their limits: video gamers need the highest precision, lowest latency, greatest stability, lowest cost and best feel.

I mean, military also needs these things, but without cost as an issue. So it's video gamers who would push the envelope.

Would you happen to have a link to the state of the art for this kind of controller?

PS5 and Xbox S have hall effect sensors by default now.

The Switch Joycons had lots of drift from the less durable potentiometers. There was an article about 3rd Party hall effect upgrades to Joycons here: https://gizmodo.com/gulikit-hall-effect-stick-nintendo-switc...

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Hall effect sensors are fundamentally just cheap, but highly accurate, magnetic sensors. They are used for compasses inside of cars and such.

But with today's technology, hall effect sensors can very precisely determine the positioning of magnets. So place a magnet inside of a joystick, and bam, hall effect sensors can triangulate the position.

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The older potentiometer based method is just a variable resistor + brush. As you move it around, the brush changes the resistance of the erm.... resistor. But this brush eventually wears out the internal parts from hundreds of thousands of movements (and video gamers can hit that kind of usage in practice)

Because the magnets + hall effect sensor has no brush, we no longer have to worry about the brush rubbing + wearing out the internals.

Thank you, appreciate the time you took to reply.

Are you sure that the official Xbox series controllers use hall effect joysticks? A quick googling seems to indicate that they still use potentiometers.

No. I guess I got confused when writing earlier.

I can't say I've played with the newest generation of consoles actually, pretty happy with my Switch so far, and I don't play nearly as much as when I was younger, so no Joycon controler drift for me either.

Still though, I read tech sites and know a bit about this Hall Effect tech. Used some of those sensors in college projects for cool-factor way back. I'm excited to see those having applications in practical video game controllers today.

There's also a lot more gamers than drone pilots. Supply and demand

Would be interesting to see how that applies to airline pilots

Rock Band guitars used hall-effect switches on the strum bar, and even used only as a switch I can assure you from experience that while the magnets might have effectively longer lifespans than the rest of the components, they only work as well as, well, the rest of the components.

A hall-effect sensor on a mass-manufactured gamepad or joystick is still only as good as the gaskets, diaphragms, and bearings. If a pot for positioning is dying on a stick before the buttons, throttles/trim levers, etc., that seems to be an indictment of the pot's quality more than anything. For instance on the Switch joycons, hall-effect sensors in theory might've reduced stick drift, but if oil and crumbs and junk are falling into the electronics because the diaphragm sucks, the sensor's the least of your problems.

Hall-effect sensors are great for DIY sticks, though, just for the granularity you get for free and the ability to use off-the-shelf magnets for any config. Even then I still see a lot of pots in DIY designs just for the relative simplicity of the signal.

Until that ring starts flashing during final approach and you're scrambling for some new AAs!

The typical answer in regulated industries is that you need to certify/verify these devices for their intended use. So I highly doubt that this was done by Microsoft but who knows. Where I am coming from - medical device industry - you wouldn’t pass QA/Regulators without the manufacturers paper and all required certifications (Electromagnetic tests, board/electronic descriptions, risk assessment etc).

Is this not necessary for the military?

What about stick drift when the potentiometers starts wearing? The should use something with a hall effect stick. Wish there was an update on this.

Edit:// I see someone else mentioned this before me.

> What about stick drift when the potentiometers starts wearing?

Throw it away and replace before it becomes an issue ?

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