Lighthouse tracking issues

Congrats @neal_white_iii - hope it was worth the extended wait and Elite looks stunning.

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Thanks! When itā€™s working itā€™s great, but Iā€™m having serious issues, trying to get base station tracking working.

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Its a better problem than wondering when your headset will arrive still lol but hope you get it all dialed in for the utmost fun my friend

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Oh man, thatā€™s a pain.

I must have been really lucky, my base stations were just detected. Are they at the latest firmware? Iā€™ve also never used power management or bluetooth with them. I just turn them on/off at the wall before/after my PC.

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I donā€™t know the firmware version. I only have 1. Itā€™s brand new, so the firmware should be fairly current. I have a remote control power socket to turn it on/off. I never turn my computer off, except to upgrade something.

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Could you check your lighthousedb.json as per this post, for the firmware version and faults? (https://community.openmr.ai/t/v1-valve-lighthouses-identification-and-diagnostic/16330)

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Thanks for your help trying to diagnose this. Iā€™m thinking it might be a USB issue, even though 2 nights ago I played for 3 hours with no issues. When I boot, my PC claims that it canā€™t find the keyboard (which is a new issue), but by the time Windows starts, the keyboard works fine. Hereā€™s the info from the .json fileā€¦

ā€œfaultsā€ : 0,
ā€œfirmware_versionā€ : 298,

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Not sure if Iā€™m teaching grandmother to suck eggs here, but the basestations donā€™t communicate to the PC directly or need to in normal operation.

Make sure your headset is easy visible to them (it) when you start steam VR. Also make sure your room has not got loads of sunlight, if I have my blinds open the base stations are not detected on a sunny day.

If the json file shows no faults (good tip Risa), have a look at the detailed logs here: http://127.0.0.1:8998/console/index.html

I recall you saying you are a software engineer, so you should be able to spot anything amiss :+1:

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I thought the same thing until yesterday, when I found out that basestations actually talk to the PC quite a lot (the other direction is only possible via bluetooth and not necessary). See the post I linked above.

However the actual info about the basestations seems to be only reported in the lighthousedb.json file and not in the logs of SteamVR (as it is when running OG Vive).

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This an interesting version of the firmware. Mine reads 436. You can have a look into your installation of SteamVR at: \Steam\steamapps\common\SteamVR\tools\lighthouse\firmware\lighthouse_tx\archive\htc_2.0 where is basically up-to-date set of firmware versions. You can even upgrade the firmware in yours. As long as you do not have Vive connected, SteamVR will not suggest it, but you can do it manually (https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/acu82e/basestations_power_management_is_not_working/edbub2m). We have confirmed with @TheIronWolf yesterday that v436 brings on the diagnostics. EDIT: v298 brings it too.

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Not sure how they can talk to the pc directly? There are no wires, they talk via the headset. Please explain.

They broadcast the ā€œInfo blockā€ with telemetry and diagnostic data using the LEDs, which is received by the tracking device (either the headset or the controllers) and reported to OpenVR/SteamVR. Read the post I linked above, it has links to GitHub repo, which has the details.

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which is received by the tracking device

So as I said, there is no direct communication from base station to PC.

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They talk as directly as it is possible with light modulated signal. You said that they donā€™t and then donā€™t need to, which I tried to correct. That is all.

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On my bases, even 298 detected faults, it is only 244 that does not detect anything.

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All Iā€™m trying to say (clearly not very well) is the base stations donā€™t talk to the pc directly. The point around need to was to re-enforce the fact that all comms from base stations are done indirectly via headset. You also donā€™t ā€˜needā€™ Bluetooth.

Source, my PC does not have Bluetooth (nor wireless) and my base stations work absolutely fine.

Anyway, as I suggested before I think Neal should check/upgrade the firmware.

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You are right. There is an intermediary (headset, controller), which may (or may not) pass the data to the PC. I believe that SteamVR uses the data from the basestations to adjust the roomspace, but the info is mainly for the tracked device, which needs to know, which BS it is looking at.

I guess when you wrote ā€œdirect communicationā€ I thought, oh, it is not correct (compared to ā€œdirect connectionā€ with which I would agree right away) and jumped in and overreacted :frowning:.

My point should have been that there is a communication from the basestations to the controllers (apart from the laser pulse), which transmits an important info, vital for the tracking to work. How much of it is vital for the PC I am not sure though.

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