DIY Overhead Control Panel
October 14, 2015 5:25 AM   Subscribe

 
At least some of those buttons should trigger audio of loud turbines warming up.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:35 AM on October 14, 2015 [5 favorites]


🔳 FRAK 🔳 FREG 🔳 FRELL 🔳 GORRAM 🔳 SMEG 🔳 BELGIUM

posted by XMLicious at 5:50 AM on October 14, 2015 [5 favorites]


Wow, first post in a long time that truely deserves the "everyone needs a hobby" tag.

Long ago I almost got a retired 360/30 front panel, it would have been a fun project to hook all those lights up to a raspberry-pi (or z80 at the time:) but in retrospect the specialized bulbs would have been hell to find replacements when one burnt out.

UI --- user interfaces are cool but amazon is probably headed the inevitable direction of no interface, the home surogate-ai will anticipate better than any idealized butler and the toilet paper delivery will just appear two days before needed (a week early if there are epidemiological indications on the web of possible vectors that would increase usage)
posted by sammyo at 6:01 AM on October 14, 2015 [2 favorites]


That is very pretty, but it hurts me to look at it because he's committed basically every HMI sin conceivable on that panel.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:10 AM on October 14, 2015 [5 favorites]


I have no idea what it is or what it does, but wow
posted by growabrain at 6:24 AM on October 14, 2015


So good. So, so good.
posted by Bugbread at 6:31 AM on October 14, 2015 [2 favorites]


I used to design replacement UIs for dinosaur control panels for railway signalling systems, electricity generators and nuclear reactors. These panels were 1970s and 1980s vintage, up to 10 metres long and usually wrapped around two or more walls of a control room. All were a mishmash of filament bulbs labelled with confusing abbreviations, analogue meters, mosaic mimics filled with discrepancy switches and tangled single line diagrams, needles leaving traces on slowly moving graph paper, Castell interlocking keys, rotary dial phones in multiple colours depending on criticality, spaghetti wiring looms in rainbow colours - you name it, the previous designers shoved it in. They were a triumph of engineering over human interface. They were a nightmare to reverse engineer and then develop a screen-based UI replacement system that had to meet usability principles and balance the strident demands of the equally dinosaur operators.

Not denying the coolness of what this guy's done, but as an (ex) professional in the field it hurt my head seeing this.
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 6:36 AM on October 14, 2015 [8 favorites]


Over in reddit, the creator mentions that this project took half a year to learn all the skills required to implement, and $900 to build.

And that this is just a prototype. He's planning another specific to Star Citizen.
posted by enfa at 6:46 AM on October 14, 2015


What I want to know is why are "Weapon Control," Coffee Control," and "Shield Control" linked with "Farting Control?" Surely it should be "Fart Control." Maybe the creator accidentally clicked off "Gerund Control."
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:58 AM on October 14, 2015 [11 favorites]


"I built it because it didn't exist and I felt like it needed to."

Love that.
posted by Kabanos at 7:29 AM on October 14, 2015 [4 favorites]


Always wanted a panel like this for my wall...but I have none of the skills or experience to build one right now. Very cool.
posted by agregoli at 7:34 AM on October 14, 2015


"Farting Control?" Surely it should be "Fart Control."

You can't control a fart. You can only control the farting.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 8:33 AM on October 14, 2015 [10 favorites]


That is very pretty, but it hurts me to look at it because he's committed basically every HMI sin conceivable on that panel.

What does this mean, please?
posted by Beti at 10:14 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


Human Machine Interface. User interface for real things, like planes.

Basically, the guy who made it thinks its cool because it's obtuse, complicated, and generally hard to use. Which is cool for a hobby project, but would get someone killed if they had to use it in real life, for like any kind of job.
posted by danny the boy at 10:56 AM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


There are rules about how you design human-machine interactions, especially in my industry (aviation). Some things I noticed:

-Too many colors
-Using red for things other than emergency warnings
-Using the color blue for labels (hard for the eye to focus on, at small sizes can be misinterpreted as yellow)
-Inconsistent labeling (some words, some symbols)
-Switches and buttons are too close together (could inadvertently hit two buttons at once, especially if wearing gloves)
-Toggles used where push buttons would be better suited
-Difficult to reach
-Requires averting your view from "forward look" to operate the controls

If he does end up making one for Star Citizen, I think he'll figure out pretty quickly that many of the controls would be better suited closer to the natural position of his hands to avoid excessive movements and to limit the amount of time he needs to hunt around for the switches he needs. If you ever take a look at the cockpit of an airliner, all those switches in the ceiling are for functions that are infrequently used during times of low workload - starting and shutting down engines, turning on and off power systems, dimmer switches for internal lighting, stuff like that.
posted by backseatpilot at 11:10 AM on October 14, 2015 [8 favorites]


Needs a "Plate Of Beans" switch.
posted by transitional procedures at 11:15 AM on October 14, 2015 [6 favorites]


THERE ARE RULES
posted by backseatpilot at 11:20 AM on October 14, 2015 [9 favorites]


There are rules about how you design human-machine interaction

Would have been better labelled as "DIY Overhead Retro Sci Fi Controller". Smells heavily of Old Trek. Arguably if "practical" was a super-strong design factor one might spend the same money on 27+" of multi-touch and some skeuomorphic UX. The flux capacitor would have been well in reach and layout mistakes could have been fixed on the cheap.

I don't think this project is really about that.

A week ago I was looking at the communications controller for SAM 26000/ex Air Force One. So buttony love. I can totally understand this controller project except sarcasm would prevent me from having a control for "trill" that isn't locked out. You always want to keep it trill.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 1:25 PM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


backseatpilot: "-Toggles used where push buttons would be better suited"

As someone who knows absolutely nothing about instrumentation design, that's the only one that jumped out at me. You toggle Photoshop on and off?

But for me, that was part of the charm.
posted by Bugbread at 4:22 PM on October 14, 2015


backseatpilot: -Inconsistent labeling (some words, some symbols)

Is this really that bad? It seems to lead to the school of thought that assumes if I know what the icon for "oil pressure low" looks like, I can also understand an icon for "traction control performance mode override disabled".
posted by traveler_ at 4:25 PM on October 14, 2015


HMIs for safety critical systems have been through significant change in the past 20 years or so. Driven by some catastrophic system or plant failures - Three Mile Island is one that jumps to mind immediately, but there are plenty of other examples.

The weakest, yet most essential, link in any open-loop control system is the human operator. An engineer can design a closed loop system to operate in very predictable ways, but when you throw in a human, it's a whole new game. For example the aim of an electricity network system operator or electricity generation operator is to maintain homeostasis in the face of slow moving external factors (daily power demand fluctuations, planned outages on the networks, etc). Human pattern matching and decision making skills lend themselves well to this. For holistic system understanding and control, we can't be beat by machines (yet). Large complex mimic panels indicating equipment condition lend themselves well to this form of operation, and that's why they've been (and remain) a very popular human interface. I've worked with operators that just 'know' the status of their system, and can quickly pinpoint a discrepancy (a reading that's a bit off, an indication in the wrong state). And for 99% of the time, that's all you need.

But - and this is a big but - humans are dreadful at decision making when there is a flood of information from a failure e.g. a pump system failure in a reactor cooling system. The operators' intuitive (learned) understanding of the system is completely thrown. All those winking lights and readouts are useless when you need to focus on one thing, right now.

So the challenge I face when designing these systems is to balance these two oppositional forces - a holistic view against the need to focus on critical information. The systems end up being a compromise to both - an overview is almost always provided, but expert alarm management systems are used to quickly draw the operators attention.

And don't get me started on the psychology of operators - familiarity issues leading to complacency, fatigue management, emotional response management etc.
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 5:19 PM on October 14, 2015 [2 favorites]


Is this really that bad? It seems to lead to the school of thought that assumes if I know what the icon for "oil pressure low" looks like, I can also understand an icon for "traction control performance mode override disabled".
posted by traveler_ at 7:25 PM on October 14


The first time I drove a car with tpms: "Your Butt light is on, what does that mean?"
posted by mcrandello at 11:04 PM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


Two weeks ago I managed to get a look at a Loran-C ground station. The system was launched in 1957, and the control panels still harked back to that era. It had fun stuff like two cesium atomic clocks and a ton of capacitors as large as soft drink bottles.
posted by Harald74 at 5:56 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


There needs to be a switch that opens and closes the door of his office and makes a compressed air hiss like it's an airlock.
posted by brundlefly at 2:59 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


If he does end up making one for Star Citizen, I think he'll figure out pretty quickly that many of the controls would be better suited closer to the natural position of his hands to avoid excessive movements and to limit the amount of time he needs to hunt around for the switches he needs.

So, more of a general purpose control panel where pushing different buttons in different combinations results in all of the various tasks that the control panel can and can new commands can be easily created. In other words, a keyboard.

Of course, he already has the keyboard and, especially if he has a gaming keyboard, that will have every button or switch he would ever need for any game ever and it will always be faster and easier than using the control panel. The point of the control panel is not that it's better but that it's more imerssive.

I see a similar thing in Mechwarrior Online driving the 25-100 ton giant stompy robots. Everyone aims faster and better with a keyboard and mouse. But some players stick with a joystick just because it feels better. You avatar in the game (the battlemech pilot) is shown using a joystick, foot peddles, and a throttle so it just feels more like you're really piloting the thing if you use the same kinds of controls.
posted by VTX at 7:57 AM on October 16, 2015


« Older what makes a good community?   |   I have water but can you drink from my hands? Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments