The family of a French explorer who died in a submersible implosion has filed a more than $50 million lawsuit, saying the crew experienced “terror and mental anguish” before the disaster and accusing the sub’s operator of gross negligence.
Paul-Henri Nargeolet was among five people who died when the Titan submersible implodedduring a voyage to the famed Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic in June 2023. No one survived the trip aboard the experimental submersible owned by OceanGate, a company in Washington state that has since suspended operations.
Custom components are more likely to be poorly tested, and to fail. The drivers are more likely to be unstable.
Off the shelf components are far less likely to have defects in them, far more heavily tested, and to be designed by people who specialize in designing that one thing, with far better documentation available.
Unless of course you’re buying them used off eBay for 10 bucks.
Personally, I would have gone with a Logitech G56 HOTAS set up. You don’t necessarily need all those buttons, but the drivers are designed to allow you to easily customize them (including with custom curves.) and the stick would give you 3 axis control (twist for use,)
There are also well-tested, robust industrial analogue controllers, but they were probably not on the radar of the guy building a submarine with factory-seconds carbon fiber.