How to Power Off Basestations remotely [SOLVED]

Pimax Hardware Pimax Discussion
263

Hi, as far as I know:

  • You do not need to pair the base stations. Everything works by just placing them in range of the BLE adapter and keep them powered on.
  • The link box will not help, as it’s only working when you also connect a VIVE HMD to it. Steam will still not detect your lighthouses. Although, I tried with a regular link box, not the VIVE PRO one.

The Python solution (and binary) work out of the box, where for the VS solution you seem to need to enable the setting in Windows to allow the OS to communicate with untrusted devices. There’s a post a few weeks back.

Perhaps this helps in some way.

2 Likes
264

Buy a smart plug and turn it on or off with your google home. That’s what I do.

3 Likes
265

That’s what I did too, although mine are standalone (with dedicated remote).

266

same, 4 pack gosund. Works perfectly by voice with my google home.

1 Like
267

While that’s always an option of course, there’s possible drawbacks.

  • Power-On via cord switch may send a surge into the light house and have negative influence on the electronics’ or motor’s life time.
  • Powering off like this will circumvent any “soft-powerdown” of the motor(s) which might be implemented in the LHs’ firmware.
  • Also, a LH in power-down likely consumes less power than a WIFI socket switch in always-ready-mode.

Oh well, splitting hairs and such :slight_smile:

4 Likes
268

For me, the upside is that it’s hassle-free and just works. No software or updates needed. Just press a button on the remote.

1 Like
269

Haha love the name of this program, im pretty sure Pimax already has a B.S Manager. Speaking of…

@PimaxUSA, @PimaxQuorra ,

Pimax should really be integrating
stuff like this into Pitool.

If it was open sourced like they promised you could have integrated it yourself.

2 Likes
270

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

272

Bump for 20 chars…

2 Likes
273

Ich hab mal ein Tutorial auf Deutsch gemacht: - YouTube

Here a german tutorial: - YouTube

274

Just to add some additional info based on the lighthouses I got from Pimax in my backer box just now (https://community.openmr.ai/t/just-got-the-backer-box-with-two-lighthouses/32906). Which seem to be running an archaic firmware and probably an older version of hardware:

The characteristic mentioned above is advertised as Read/Write:

00001525-1212-efde-1523-785feabcd124
Properties: READ, WRITE
Parsed value: (0x) 00
Raw value: (0x) 00

and at the beginning it seems to have some random value, but writing 0, turns off the lighthouse and writing 1 turns it back on. Once written reading from it returns the written value. Interestingly enough this characteristic is explained as “power control: 1 is on”. Which makes sense :slight_smile:

The other characteristic is explained as “Mode” and I have suspicion that this could indicate the channel number, but reading it gives some unrelated value (e.g. 0x24).

This is not present on 2001 firmware apparently. I am going to upgrade the firmware once I get hands on Valve’s headset and see how this changes the behavior. The good news is, out of the box, it is possible to power control the bases just fine.

LHv2_BTLE_chars
LHv2_BTLE_chars1440×2029 302 KB

1 Like
275

I have published a Python script for LHv2 power management on GitHub (GitHub - risa2000/lh2ctrl: Power management of Valve v2 lighthouses over Bluetooth LE). It is similar to the original script for LHv1 in that:

  • it is purely command line
  • it targets linux (depends on bluepy)

I have used the findings from @nouser2019, just coded it for linux environment.

6 Likes
276

Just saw you recently updated this.

Your work is amazing and appreciated.

I wonder since this is open source could Pimax include this in Pitool or Pimax Experience so users have one less disappointment to go through when first getting the headset and realizing that their lighthouses don’t turn off as they would expect?

@SweViver @arminelec @Miracle ?

Also @risa2000 how about combining both into one instead of two different programs?

2 Likes
277

With Opensource your usually okay to use it as long as you accredit the source and include documentation.

278

The “problem” is that my implementation targets linux (and uses linux API), so it cannot be simply copied over to Windows except the protocol (which is a bit convoluted for v1 but pretty straightforward for v2). I guess Pimax should be able to port it to Windows (if they want).

I was thinking about it, but then decided for simplicity to keep it separate. I would expect that someone either runs v1 or v2 LHs but not both (as they are not compatible), and therefore can pick the corresponding version. The other reason was that the protocols are not similar at all so there is not much to share between the implementations. So at the end I preferred two rather simple implementations separated.

In general, I wrote both scripts as a demonstration of the principle, so they are easy to use and easy to read (and understand), rather than polished UI app.

EDIT: Just to explain why it is targeting linux - I am running it on my Raspberry Pi :slight_smile:.

1 Like
279

With open source (as for example anything on GitHub) there is usually a licence, which defines, how you can use the code, or if there is none, you can always ask the author. In my case it really does not matter - I wrote it for a demonstration, hoping someone will make a nice Windows app out of it :smiley: .

2 Likes
280

Pimax would never take someone’s code without asking permission or giving credit first.

cough, cough,…revive…cough.

281

Oh so i can’t use it on windows? Fiddlesticks does Pimax even work on linux?

282

Was this ever proven? If not, it’s a really ugly rumor to be spreading… :wink:

2 Likes