Hacker News Reader

Comment by upbeat_general | Hacker News Reader

Aren’t basically all modern cars steer by wire? I guess ethernet vs CAN is notable but isn’t that a pretty minor implementation detail?

View on HN

Many modern cars are throttle by wire. Orthogonally, many have electric power steering instead of hydraulic power steering, depending what is multiplying your force, but still with actual linkage from your arms / steering wheel, to the turning of the wheels.

I am not aware of many that are actually steer by wire.

Nope, you are thinking of EPS. This is a steering wheel that is not connected to the steering rack at all. It is like a racing wheel for a game console and the steering rack is like a car in the game. Just software.

I hope they learned from the Titan submersible to always go at least one step up from the cheapest game controller.

Their whole problem was custom hardware. I don't know why people were so hot on them reinventing tested commodity electronics.

The complaint wasn't that they used an off-the-shelf controller, it's the fact that it was a no-name aliexpress special (and wireless to boot). They didn't even bother to use a well-respected brand like the wired xbox 360 controller, which has been used in all kinds of similar applications (they also didn't have a spare). It was obvious even to a relative layman that this was emblamatic of a cowboy attitude, compared to the carbon fibre hull which is much harder to evaluate.

Seriously? Why would you do that?

> it was a no-name aliexpress special

Not according to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_submersible_implosion

> A modified Logitech F710 wireless game controller was used to steer

Even then, it wasn't responsible for the implosion, right?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com